From functional to object-oriented programming
Rudolf Berghammer, Frank Huch · 2005
Many Computer Science curricula at universities start programming with a functional programming language (for instance, SML, Haskell, Scheme) and later change to the imperative programming paradigm. For the latter usually the object-oriented programming language Java is used. However, this puts a burden on the students, since even the smallest Java program cannot be formulated without the notion of class and static and public method. In this paper we present an approach for changing from functional to object-oriented programming. Using (Standard) ML for the functional programming paradigm, it still prepares the decisive notions of object-orientation by specific constructs of this language. As experience at the University of Kiel has shown, this smoothes the transition and helps the students getting started with programming in the Java language.