Functional reactive programming
programming paradigm for reactive programming using key features of functional programming
Functional reactive programming (FRP) is a programming paradigm for reactive programming (asynchronous dataflow programming) using the building blocks of functional programming (e.g., map, reduce, filter). FRP has been used for programming graphical user interfaces (GUIs), robotics, games, and music, aiming to simplify these problems by explicitly modeling time.
Formulations of FRP
The original formulation of functional reactive programming can be found in the ICFP 97 paper Functional Reactive Animation by Conal Elliott and Paul Hudak.
FRP has taken many forms since its introduction in 1997. One axis of diversity is discrete vs. continuous semantics. Another axis is how FRP systems can be changed dynamically.
Continuous
The earliest formulation of FRP used continuous semantics, aiming to abstract over many operational details that are not important to the meaning of a program. The key properties of this formulation are:
Modeling values that vary over continuous time, called "behaviors" and later "signals".
Modeling "events" which have occurrences at discrete points in time.
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