Move Over Free Monads: Make Way for Free Applicatives! - John de Goes

In the Scala FP community, free monads are one of the fastest growing and hottest ways to compose programs from small, modular, interpretable languages. Yet, the trees described by free monads are dynamic: their structure depends on runtime values, which limit the types of analysis one can do on these trees. Free applicatives address this limitation by only permitting trees whose structure can be described statically, independent from runtime values.
In this talk, John shows how this tradeoff enables extremely powerful introspection and transformation of the very structure of a program, in ways that are completely impossible with free monads.

[@meditating010]

I must confess. FP stuff John obviously knows quite a lot about - look at those biceps, looks like can curl 100 lbs with ease.

[@elcapitan6126]

every programmer should do some weight training, even if its just pullups pushups and bodyweight squats. gotta compensate for all that sitting around!

[@pr0master]

As a beginner. How can I be up and running as quickly as possible. I understood 20% of the talk.

[@dupersuper1000]

pr0master are you wanting to learn Scala? Or functional programming in general? I could give advice for both, but both will essentially come down to hard work and practice. Basically just try to build cool stuff that you’re interested in. You’ll run into problems, and talks like these may provide insight into possible solutions over time.