25 days ago
- Functional programming in hica emphasizes composing functions rather than changing state, with everything as an expression.
- Immutability is default using 'let'; mutation uses 'var' locally, promoting pure functions without side effects.
- Functions are first-class values, supporting higher-order functions, closures, and combinators like map, filter, and fold.
- Key operations include flat_map for flattening lists and and_then for Maybe/Result, with the pipe operator '|>' for chaining.
- Algebraic data types (structs and enums) model data, with exhaustive pattern matching and safe failure handling via Maybe and Result.
- Recursion is used for tree-shaped data, with ADTs enabling recursive structures like Tree.
- The '?' operator allows early returns in fallible functions, constrained by return type annotations and wrapper type matching.
- A program example integrates structs, pure functions, closures, pipes, and pattern matching to process student data.