Learning Haskell and FP

[Doug Ransom]

I have read "The Craft of Functional Programming" by Simon Thompson and a
few paper on the web.  "The Craft" is a good book, but it is an introduction
to FP.


It seems to me it there are a lot of books on OO design I can pick up at the
bookstore, but in the FP world, one must worm their way through all sorts of
papers.  I have seen papers on Catamorphisms, Monads, Programming with
Barbed Wire, folds, etc.  I think these papers are hard to understand if you
don't have the acadademic/mathematical background -- being papers and not
textbooks these papers assume a fair bit of base knowledge. I know I can
design a fold function to use in place of primitive recursion for most data
structures -- I just don't know if I should. It is pretty easy to get
through "The Craft of Functional Programming" without understanding what
Category Theory  , a Catamorphism , or a Kleisli Composition is.  I can see
lots of real Software Engineering oppurtunities for these various techniques
if I could just put them together.

Is there a good textbook on Functional Programming which starts from a base
point similar to "The craft of Functional Programming" but more advanced in
terms of introducing necessary topics like Category theory, catamorphisms,
monads, etc?  I would find such a book very useful, especially if it
concentrated on lazy functional programming.


Doug Ransom
Systems Engineer
Power Measurement Ltd.
http://www.pml.com
250-652-7100 office
250-652-0411 fax
mailto:doug_ransom@pml.com