Functional PHP Extension

[eluser]sophistry[/eluser]
Thanks all for the responses to my questions. I found this well-written paper about FP from the wikipedia page. Here is the link. I've found it helpful to sit back for a few minutes and think about the big picture while reading this. FP really is a different way of thinking about structuring programs, so you can not just drop this library in and have some neat new features in CI.

Here is a quote from the paper linked above that describes modularity and glue as key aspects of a change to an FP mindset...

It is now generally accepted that modular design is the key to successful pro-
gramming, and languages such as Modula-II [Wir82], Ada [oD80] and Standard
ML [MTH90] include features specifically designed to help improve modularity.
However, there is a very important point that is often missed. When writing
a modular program to solve a problem, one first divides the problem into sub-
problems, then solves the sub-problems and combines the solutions. The ways
in which one can divide up the original problem depend directly on the ways
in which one can glue solutions together. Therefore, to increase ones ability
to modularise a problem conceptually, one must provide new kinds of glue in
the programming language. Complicated scope rules and provision for separate
compilation only help with clerical details; they offer no new conceptual tools
for decomposing problems.

One can appreciate the importance of glue by an analogy with carpentry.
A chair can be made quite easily by making the parts - seat, legs, back etc. -
and sticking them together in the right way. But this depends on an ability
to make joints and wood glue. Lacking that ability, the only way to make a
chair is to carve it in one piece out of a solid block of wood, a much harder
task. This example demonstrates both the enormous power of modularisation
and the importance of having the right glue.

Now let us return to functional programming. We shall argue in the remain-
der of this paper that functional languages provide two new, very important
kinds of glue. We shall give many examples of programs that can be modu-
larised in new ways, and thereby greatly simplified. This is the key to functional
programming’s power - it allows greatly improved modularisation. It is also the
goal for which functional programmers must strive - smaller and simpler and
more general modules, glued together with the new glues we shall describe.