Learning Haskell and FP

[Benjamin L. Russell]

While it may not be advanced or mathematical enough for your needs, you may wish to read _The Haskell School of Expression: Learning Functional Programming through Multimedia,_ by Paul Hudak.  This is also an introductory book on functional programming, with a special focus on Haskell, although the examples used are mainly from multimedia.

I compared the first few chapters of both _The Craft of Functional Programming_ and _The Haskell School of Expression,_ and personally found Hudak's book (the latter) much more interesting.  The exercises are designed to teach the reader to think in terms of functional, as opposed to imperative or object-oriented, programming--hence the phrase in the title "School of Expression."

--Ben
--
Benjamin L. Russell
russell@brainlink.com
benjamin.russell.es.94@aya.yale.edu
"Furuike ya!  Kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."  --Matsuo Basho

On Wed, 27 Dec 2000 17:30:19 -0800
 Doug Ransom <Doug_Ransom@pml.com> wrote:
> 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
> 
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