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Archive for the ‘functional programming’ Category

Learning Haskell

Monday, November 8th, 2010

In a previous post I talked about Objective C, probably best known as the primary programming language for Apple’s laptops, desktops and iPhones.

Now I am teaching myself Haskell, a strongly typed functional programming language with type inference. I am reading the book Real World Haskell published by O ‘Reilly (full text also available for free online). I have only read about 50 pages but I am very satisfied with the book so far. It manages to balance the delicate trade-off between introducing concepts so fast that too many details are missing and being so meticulous that the reading becomes too boring. As the book is written now, it is actually quite addictive to read—I want to keep learning more! I love this style of writing a programming language book. However, as a consequence of this (conscious) choice of the authors, parts this book would be very hard to follow for someone who hasn’t taken at least an introductory compiler or functional programming class. However, I regard this as a strength as I wouldn’t want to read a book that assumed no programming experience.

Since I am still at an early learning state it remains to see what I think about Haskell itself. Stay tuned!