Re: practical functional programming books

Re: practical functional programming books

[Hao-yang Wang]

>I ordered a book, The Functional Approach to Programming, and
>although it does help somewhat it is too theoretical/math
>oriented. So are most of the docs and examples I have seen. 

Did you imply that math is not practical? :-)

The Functional Approach to Programming is my favorite book on ML! And 
Chapter 8 Syntactic Analysis is my favorite chapter. However, as its 
title says, this is a book about programming, and it is not a language 
book.

(Structures and Interpretation of Computer Programs is my favorite book 
on Lisp. However, if somebody is reading SICP in order to quickly become 
productive with Scheme, s/he will be disappointed, too.)

Maybe we need a introductory book that (1) starts with examples in text 
processing and other "symbolic" stuffs, which nicely shows off caml's 
strong points in practical applications; (2) emphasize on how to solve 
problems using existing tools (i.e., using the algorithms and data 
structures from the standard library instead of writing our own versions, 
using camllex/camlyacc instead of writing our own parsers, etc.). The 
result will be a practical book that sells lots of copies and promotes 
o'caml to lots of new fans, although it might not be as "interesting" as 
the two books mentioned above.

Cheers,
Hao-yang Wang

Re: practical functional programming books

[Francisco Reyes]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2000 16:21:19 -0800, Hao-yang Wang wrote:

>Did you imply that math is not practical? :-)

Nope, but I do think that for the average  "business/database"
programmer math doesn't do all that much. Specially if working
with an SQL database AND you are not doing DBA work.


>The Functional Approach to Programming is my favorite book on ML! And 
>Chapter 8 Syntactic Analysis is my favorite chapter.

Haven't got to that chapter yet.

>However, as its title says, this is a book about programming, and it is not a language 
>book.

I noticed. :-(


>Maybe we need a introductory book that (1) starts with examples in text 
>processing and other "symbolic" stuffs, which nicely shows off caml's 
>strong points in practical applications;

That would be great, although I don't know what kind of market
there is for it. After all how many people have even heard of
Ocaml or even ML? compared to other languages probably a few
small percentage. The main reason this is important is because
that is exactly what publishers look at.


>using camllex/camlyacc instead of writing our own parsers, etc.).

Haven't got to that point yet either.

>result will be a practical book that sells lots of copies and promotes 
>o'caml to lots of new fans,

Don't know if it would sell lots of copies, but it would surely
make learning the language much easier.



francisco
Moderator of the Corporate BSD list
http://www.egroups.com/group/BSD_Corporate