If you've hung around with functional types or browsed around in functional libraries, you may have heard about the infamous free monad. This talk will provide an introductory take on free objects and their implementations in Scala and Haskell.
We'll begin by looking at basic examples of free monoids and free monads, and then we will graduate to looking at some of their actual usages in real code. No previous knowledge of Haskell is required.
Alissa Pajer began her functional programming career as a Scala engineer at Precog. She worked there for two years, until Precog was acquired by RichRelevance, her current employer. Before her coding days, she studied pure mathematics, earning a Bachelors from Carleton College and a Masters from the University of Colorado. She currently lives in Munich, Germany, where she spends her non-computer time hiking, running, swimming, and cycling.
