Course · 12 lessons ~48 hr Intermediate

Programming Languages and Functional Programming

Programming Languages and Functional Programming covers: Why Study Programming Languages, Functional Programming Fundamentals, First-Class Functions, Higher-Order Functions, Closures, and the Map/Filter/Reduce Family, Pattern Matching, Algebraic Data Types, and Why They Make Bugs Vanish, The BEAM Lens. Year 1, Quarter 3. Includes 15 exercises and 1 projects.

reading · we frame, you read MIT or the canonical taught · we author, no canonical fits ↺ spirals back to earlier lessons

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reading · 35 min + ~240 min canonical

Why Study Programming Languages: Paradigms, Not Syntax

You already know how to program. Probably Ruby, maybe Python, some C from earlier in this path. The natural question this course asks is: why learn another language? If you can al…

primary Programming Languages (UW) by Dan Grossman on Coursera

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reading · 30 min + ~240 min canonical L1

Functional Programming Fundamentals: Pure Functions, Immutability, and Recursion

You can write functional-style code in any language. You can also write it better in some languages than others. The three foundations of functional programming — pure functions, …

primary Programming Languages (UW) by Dan Grossman on Coursera

after L1 locked

reading · 30 min + ~240 min canonical L1

First-Class Functions, Higher-Order Functions, Closures, and the Map/Filter/Reduce Family

The previous lesson said you can write iteration as recursion. This lesson says you usually don't have to. Functional languages provide a small family of higher-order functions — …

primary Programming Languages (UW) by Dan Grossman on Coursera

after L2 locked

reading · 35 min + ~240 min canonical L1

Pattern Matching, Algebraic Data Types, and Why They Make Bugs Vanish

You've written Ruby that looked like this:

primary Programming Languages (UW) by Dan Grossman on Coursera

after L3 locked

reading · 35 min + ~240 min canonical L1

The BEAM Lens: Processes, Message Passing, and Why Elixir Pretends to Be a Language for Robots

Elixir's secret weapon isn't the language — it's the runtime. BEAM (Bogdan/Björn's Erlang Abstract Machine) is what makes Elixir code able to handle millions of concurrent connect…

primary Programming Languages (UW) by Dan Grossman on Coursera

after L4 locked

exercise reading · 15 min L1

Exercises: Easy (Warm-up)

- [ ] Hello World — Exercism Elixir — First Elixir module and function - [ ] Bob — Exercism Elixir — Pattern matching on string conditions - [ ] Nucleotide Count — Exercism Elixir…

after L5 locked

exercise reading · 30 min L1

Exercises: Medium (Core)

- [ ] Roman Numerals — Exercism Elixir — Recursive decomposition with pattern matching - [ ] Parallel Letter Frequency — Exercism Elixir — Task.async/await for parallel map - [ ] …

after L6 locked

exercise reading · 45 min L1

Exercises: Hard (Stretch)

- [ ] Build a Supervisor tree — three GenServers (counter, cache, logger) supervised with :oneforone - [ ] Implement a concurrent web scraper — Task.asyncstream with rate limiting…

after L7 locked

exercise reading · 60 min L1

Mini-Project

- [ ] Build a chat room in Elixir — GenServer for room state, processes for each user, message broadcasting via send/receive, supervision tree for fault tolerance; no Phoenix, jus…

after L8 locked

L10

project reading · 360 min L1

Project: Concurrent Web Scraper in Elixir

Build a web scraper that fetches multiple pages concurrently using Task.asyncstream. Parse HTML to extract links and titles. Use a GenServer to track visited URLs and prevent revi…

after L9 locked

L11

assessment reading · 63 min L1

Self-Assessment: Programming Languages and Functional Programming

- [ ] What is functional programming? How does it differ from imperative programming? - [ ] What are pure functions? Why does immutability matter? - [ ] Explain pattern matching i…

after L10 locked

L12

assessment reading · 60 min L1

Quarter 3 Gate Check: Graphs and Core Algorithms

- [ ] Course 3.1 knowledge check passed - [ ] Course 3.2 knowledge check passed - [ ] Course 3.3 knowledge check passed - [ ] Course 3.4 knowledge check passed - [ ] Route Planner…

after L11 locked

12 lessons. Read in order; spiral back when you need to. By the end you'll have used the core ideas twice — once on the abstract, once on something you'll meet at work next week.