Re: Beginning functional programming

["Kyle R. Burton" <kyle.burton@gmail.com>]

+1 on 7 langs in 7 weeks, I think it's a great book for getting you
introduced to a bunch of languages, but it's not a very good book on
FP.

My favorite (so far) is actually Mark Jason Dominus' Higher Order Perl:

  http://hop.perl.plover.com/

I programmed in imperative languages (including Perl) for over a
decade before I started to study FP in earnest.  HOP uses what is an
imperative language (Perl) that supports closures and guides you
through learning FP from that perspective.  I don't use Perl much any
more (I use Clojure and Ruby), but this book helped my journey to FP
more than any other.

I contrast this to the books I read to learn Lisp, like PAIP [1], but
were not good introductions to FP itself.

Just to throw another FP language in the mix, there is also a Philly
Scala group that is pretty active:

  http://www.meetup.com/scala-phase/

They have a conference (second year in a row) coming up this summer:

  http://scalathon.org/2012/

I think this is worth attending for anyone on this list (it was also
pretty cheap last year and brought in great speakers).



Regards,

Kyle

[1] http://norvig.com/paip.html

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Dustin Getz <dustin.getz@gmail.com> wrote:
> 7 Languages also has a chapter on Erlang.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Dustin Getz <dustin.getz@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> check out the book Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. there are chapters on
>> Scala, Clojure and Haskell. I loved the book, it gets you coding which
>> forces you to interact with the language's community and libraries, you'll
>> have a great feel for which language is the one that resonates best with
>> you.
>>
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Languages-Weeks-Programming-Programmers/dp/193435659X
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Aaron Kuehler <aaronkuehler@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi all - 3rd year student at West Chester University here
>>>
>>>  Take Dr. Wyatt's "Programming Languages" course. While not strictly a FP
>>> course, you will learn about the concepts of functional programming through
>>> exploration of Common Lisp and ML. This class was my absolute favorite.
>>> Having some familiarity with WCU's Java-centric curriculum, prepare to have
>>> your mind blown.
>>>
>>> More than learning a new language to understand FP, I would recommend
>>> reading the papers on which the concept has been championed. One of my
>>> favorites is John Backus' 1978 ACM paper "Can Programming Be Liberated from
>>> the von Neumann Style?..." http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Backus78.pdf
>>>
>>> Like Kyle, I'm partial to LISP-y languages, so +1 for Clojure, or just
>>> plain old Common Lisp or Scheme. You'll have to learn a bit of Common Lisp
>>> anyway at some point in your undergrad career to meet the course
>>> requirements at WCU.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> --
>>> Aaron Kuehler
>>> Aaron.Kuehler@gmail.com
>>
>>
>



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