[Haskell-beginners] Functional programming principles at higher levels?

[Michael Xavier]

I'm curious as to what it is about learnyouahaskell and other similar
tutorials that makes them "ridiculous". I found LYAH very helpful when I
wanted to actually learn how to get useful things done in Haskell without
taking a year off to read about theory. If that approach is ridiculous then
I think our definitions of that word differ.

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 10:45 PM, Christopher Howard <
christopher.howard at frigidcode.com> wrote:

> On 09/24/2011 09:12 PM, Mike Meyer wrote:
>
>
>> Actually, functional programming and the higher math are separate
>> things. Haskell (and I expect the similar languages) have a lot of
>> math in their documentation. But that's not true for other functional
>> languages, like Clojure or Scheme. With a background in those
>> languages, I didn't have much trouble with the functional nature of
>> haskell. But I'm still trying to recall the graduate math courses I
>> took long time ago in a state far, far different from today.
>>
>>
> Really? I'll confess I'm a bit surprised to hear that perspective. I don't
> know anything about Clojure or Scheme. But I found in trying to understand
> Haskell that it really is all about higher math. Once I finally gave up on
> "learnyouahaskell" and other ridiculous tutorials, I found the real
> functional programming textbooks, and discovered that it all starts with
> lambda calculus; all the explanations are given in set theory notation, with
> occasionally comparisons to integral and differential calculus for
> illustration, with very specific rules regarding substitution and reduction
> and normal forms. I'm still trying to figure out what all those combinators
> are about! And it is all rested on mathematical proofs, usually inductive.
>
> And that is just the lambda calculus aspect. Then we move on to type theory
> (!!!) plus the various types of polymorphism, and then on to a number of
> other topics that I don't know enough about to even mention intelligibly.
>
>
> --
> frigidcode.com
> theologia.indicium.us
>
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-- 
Michael Xavier
http://www.michaelxavier.net
LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-xavier/13/b02/a26>
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