

Thinking Functionally with Haskell – Richard Bird's New Book - lisptime
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Functionally-Haskell-Richard-Bird/dp/1107087201/

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chollida1
For those of you who aren't familiar with the author's other works, it's worth
taking a peek at his other books.

I can whole heatedly recommend Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design
[http://www.amazon.com/Pearls-Functional-Algorithm-Design-
Ric...](http://www.amazon.com/Pearls-Functional-Algorithm-Design-
Richard/dp/0521513383)

It's a good cross between two other excellent books:

\- Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-
Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-
Jon-Bentley/dp/0201657880)

and

\- Chris Okasaki's Purely Function Data Structures
[http://www.amazon.com/Purely-Functional-Structures-Chris-
Oka...](http://www.amazon.com/Purely-Functional-Structures-Chris-
Okasaki/dp/0521663504).

If you haven't read all three, its well worth your while to do so!

And of course if you are going down the rabbit hole of reading Perls of
Functional Algorithm Design then you need to read the "how to read Pearls of
Functional Algorithm design" as well.

[http://www.atamo.com/blog/how-to-read-pearls-by-richard-
bird...](http://www.atamo.com/blog/how-to-read-pearls-by-richard-bird-1/)

~~~
vishnugupta
Seconded! Also, I'd highly recommend "Introduction to Functional Programming
using Haskell" by the same author. This was the book that set me forth on the
path of FP during post graduation. Though, professionally, I've been
programming in Java for close to a decade now most of the FP principals have
held me in good stead.

[edit] Preface says "The present book is a completely rewritten version of the
second edition of my Introduction to Functional Programming using Haskel" so
my recommendation is moot.

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dazbradbury
Richard Bird was my lecturer at university - Intro to functional programming
was on the pre-university required reading list... We were told to buy our
professor's book before arriving.

Turns out it was an excellent course, and Haskell is a great intro to
programming in general, but the book? Think I sold it back via Amazon in the
first term.

Haven't read this new book, but $90 seems like a price set to be sold to
university libraries, not students - surprised to see it on the HN homepage.

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codygman
I'm contemplating buying this, but I won't let myself until I feel like I've
done all the exercises in "Beginning Haskell"[0].

0: [http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Haskell-A-Project-Based-
Appr...](http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Haskell-A-Project-Based-
Approach/dp/1430262508)

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calpaterson
Looks like an updated version of his 1998 book "Introduction to Functional
Programming using Haskell":

[http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Functional-Programming-
us...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Functional-Programming-using-
Haskell/dp/0134843460)

The 1998 book was excellent, except that it came just before Haskell 98 and so
one or two examples needed a little modification before they would build with
GHC, but really it was a paper and pencil type of thing. I read the whole
thing sitting in a copyright library without a computer because the book was
two expensive to buy and was not in my university library. Looks like that
won't change with this update.

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akurilin
What is this book's specific niche compared to all the other Haskell books out
there?

~~~
T-R
Just taking a quick glance through the table of contents, it looks like it
aims to focus more on "how to think about problems in this paradigm" (as the
title implies) than the more practically-oriented "let's go write fizz-buzz"
approach. For example, it jumps into function composition before it even talks
about how to use GHCi. It has a chapter called "Proofs", and it seems to have
a chapter focusing on using lazy evaluation to trade off time and space
consumption.

Glancing at the text available, it doesn't seem to make any references to
other programming languages, and takes an approach of "let's build this up
from the things you learned in Math class". Seems like it might be a good fit
for someone with more math than programming background, or someone with enough
programming experience that they want to get to the heart of what functional
programming is, but a bit jaded by the usual language tutorial format.

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bratsche
If you're signed up to the edX FP with Haskell course you can get Graham
Hutton's book "Programming in Haskell" 20% off.

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KobaQ
Ok, I'm not a big fan of ads here at Hacker News, but actually you kind of
proved me wrong as I'm genuinely curious and very tempted to give it a try
:-). It looks like a book that could help me become a better dev. I'd probably
be using FP via F# at the end of the day, but it's more about the FP mindset,
that I think I still don't have.

Anyway, buy it somewhere else! (I will do ...). I know, Amazon is super cheap
and convenient, but we need competition and diversity.

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mataug
50 USD is too expensive for me, Even the kindle edition is 1k INR. Sorry too
poor :-(

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ExpiredLink
The functional and Haskell hype is on the decline. You don't miss much.

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plinkplonk
Hmm Amazon says "This title has not yet been released"

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seubert
The Kindle edition, at least, is available now. Bought it earlier this week
and it's been great thru the first couple chapters.

