mas644

Interesting article, though the title is a bit misleading. I'd say a better one would be "Design Patterns of Functional Languages" as the author is comparing common functional design patterns (monads, functors) to GoF OO design patterns. I think to explain to non-functional programmers the benefits of functional, you have to go beyond design patterns or showing them how you can make a compact loop with a single application of a "map" function. You gotta show them how treacherous side-effects are (especially as code size grows) and how the declarative nature of FP inherently creates highly modular code and flexible code!

It depends on your background (CS and math are very very useful) and which track you're going for (standard vs advanced). I believe Norvig & Russell's textbook is being used for the class, which is the standard for AI classes at universities and a FANTASTIC textbook. If you skim through it, you can get an idea. I took a similar class in grad school with the same text (I'm a CS major) and sometimes spent 2 hours in a week...sometimes 15. It depends on what you're good at and how much detail they go into.