Functional Programming in Lean
by David Thrane Christiansen
Copyright Microsoft Corporation 2023
This is a free book on using Lean 4 as a programming language. All code samples are tested with Lean 4 release 4.1.0.
Release history
January, 2024
This is a minor bugfix release that fixes a regression in an example program.
October, 2023
In this first maintenance release, a number of smaller issues were fixed and the text was brought up to date with the latest release of Lean.
May, 2023
The book is now complete! Compared to the April pre-release, many small details have been improved and minor mistakes have been fixed.
April, 2023
This release adds an interlude on writing proofs with tactics as well as a final chapter that combines discussion of performance and cost models with proofs of termination and program equivalence. This is the last release prior to the final release.
March, 2023
This release adds a chapter on programming with dependent types and indexed families.
January, 2023
This release adds a chapter on monad transformers that includes a description of the imperative features that are available in do-notation.
December, 2022
This release adds a chapter on applicative functors that additionally describes structures and type classes in more detail. This is accompanied with improvements to the description of monads. The December 2022 release was delayed until January 2023 due to winter holidays.
November, 2022
This release adds a chapter on programming with monads. Additionally, the example of using JSON in the coercions section has been updated to include the complete code.
October, 2022
This release completes the chapter on type classes. In addition, a short interlude introducing propositions, proofs, and tactics has been added just before the chapter on type classes, because a small amount of familiarity with the concepts helps to understand some of the standard library type classes.
September, 2022
This release adds the first half of a chapter on type classes, which are Lean's mechanism for overloading operators and an important means of organizing code and structuring libraries. Additionally, the second chapter has been updated to account for changes in Lean's stream API.
August, 2022
This third public release adds a second chapter, which describes compiling and running programs along with Lean's model for side effects.
July, 2022
The second public release completes the first chapter.
June, 2022
This was the first public release, consisting of an introduction and part of the first chapter.
About the Author
David Thrane Christiansen has been using functional languages for twenty years, and dependent types for ten. Together with Daniel P. Friedman, he wrote The Little Typer, an introduction to the key ideas of dependent type theory. He has a Ph.D. from the IT University of Copenhagen. During his studies, he was a major contributor to the first version of the Idris language. Since leaving academia, he has worked as a software developer at Galois in Portland, Oregon and Deon Digital in Copenhagen, Denmark, and he was the Executive Director of the Haskell Foundation. At the time of writing, he is employed at the Lean Focused Research Organization working full-time on Lean.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.