Functional Programming

(V3 + Ü2, Summer Semester 2026)

Type	Times/Room	Instructor
Lecture (3)	Mon 12:30 - 14:00 AH 2 (starting on April 20)	Prof. Dr. Jürgen Giesl
	Tue 16:30 - 18:00 AH 1
Exercise (2)	Fri 14:30 - 16:00 AH 2	Jan-Christoph Kassing
Tutorials	Wed 14:30 - 16:00 AH 5	TBA
	Thu 08:30 - 10:00 AH 1	TBA
	Thu 16:30 - 18:00 AH 1	TBA

If you have any questions, please contact Jan-Christoph Kassing via Kassing(at)cs(dot)rwth-aachen(dot)de.

Registration and Moodle Learning Environment

The first lecture is on April 20 at 12:30 in AH 2 (i.e., we will start in the second week of the lecture period). Moreover, there will be a lecture instead of an exercise course on April 24, 2026.

Language

The course is given in English.

Course Notes and Videos

Printed course notes are available (in German): Course Notes (version of March 24, 2024)
Hand-written course notes will be made available after each lecture.
Video recordings from 2021 will also be made available step by step, according to the progress of the lecture.

The course gives an introduction to functional programming using the language Haskell. Moreover, we will discuss models for the semantics and the implementation of functional languages. This also includes techniques for type checking and type inference.

Area

Theoretical Computer Science, Theoretical Foundations of SSE (Core Subjects)

Haskell

In the course, we use the functional programming language Haskell. Information on Haskell can be found on the Haskell home page www.haskell.org. To interpret or compile Haskell programs, one can use the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). For the lecture, we recommend the interactive mode of the GHC (called GHCi). Haskell can be downloaded here and a simple Windows GUI for GHCi is here.

References

P. Thiemann: Grundlagen der funktionalen Programmierung, Teubner, 1994.
A. Field, P. Harrison: Functional Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1988.
C. Reade: Elements of Functional Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1989.
R. Bird: Thinking Functionally With Haskell, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
R. Bird, J. Gibbons. Algorithm Design with Haskell. Cambridge University Press, 2020.
P. Pepper: Funktionale Programmierung, Springer, 2002.
M. M. T. Chakravarty, G. C. Keller: An Introduction to Computing With Haskell, Pearson, 2002.
Also appeared as "Einführung in die Programmierung mit Haskell", Pearson, 2004.
S. J. Thompson: Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming, Addison-Wesley, 2011.
G. Hutton: Programming in Haskell, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
B. O'Sullivan, J. Goerzen: Real World Haskell, O'Reilly, 2010.
S. Peyton Jones: The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages, Prentice Hall, 1987.
M. Lipvaca: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good, No Starch Press, 2011.
J. Loeckx, K. Sieber: The Foundations of Program Verification, Wiley-Teubner, 1987.
S. Peyton Jones (ed.): Haskell 98 Languages and Libraries: The Revised Report. Cambridge University Press, 2003. (Available from https://haskell.org/onlinereport/. Haskell 2010 Report is available here.)
S. Peyton Jones: Tackling the Awkward Squad: monadic input/output, concurrency, exceptions, and foreign-language calls in Haskell, Marktoberdorf Summer School 2000.

Research Group Computer Science 2

Dept. of Computer Science