Lambda the Ultimate

My talk will instead present a novel approach to the first-year programming curriculum. Specifically, I will explain how a functional semester ideally prepares students for the true essence of object-oriented programming according to Alan Kay: the systematic construction of small modules of code and the construction of programs without assignment statements. Experience shows that these courses prepare students better for upper-level courses than a year of plain object-oriented programming. Initial reports from our students' co-op employers appear to confirm the experiences of our upper-level instructors. (full abstract)

We discussed this approach (FP as an introduction to OOP) before. This presentation is from FPDE 2005.