From: "Alexy Khrabrov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org
Subject: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 19:01:57 -0800
How do people stumble on Haskell?
-- snip
What's folks most interesting ways to arrive at FP?
Cheers,
Alexy
I have been programming other stuff for years (APL, C, Assembly, Visual
Basic, Java, C#) and a year or two ago I started thinking of going back to
study computing a bit more formally. Reading web pages of lecturers on
courses that looked interesting I found a few whose favorite language was a
functional programming language called Haskell. I didn't know anything
about functional programming so I just moved on.
More recently I started to work my way through 'Modern compiler
implementation in Java' by Andrew Appel and he seemed keen on functional
programming and the book covers extending the basic language to a functional
programming language. (I have have read the relevant chapter but not got as
far as implementing it yet!)
Just before Christmas I decided to investigate Haskell. I got hold of a
copy of Graham Hutton's new book 'Programming in Haskell', which I am
thoroughly enjoying. Haskell is great fun but as I dig deeper I am finding
my lack of mathematical sophistication to be a problem.
This leads me off thread to ask if anyone could recommend reading for
someone who has done mathematics to college level, but nearly 30 years ago
when many English schools didn't cover 20th century mathematics. I thought
calculus was about differentiation and integration and was very surprised to
discover that there were such things as 'predicate calculus', 'propositional
calculus', and various flavours of 'lambda calculus'. I also have little or
no idea of set theory, group theory, domain theory, combinatory logic, ...
(I can just imagine the surprised looks on the faces of the mathematicians
reading this. You never know computer programmers could be so ignorant, did
you?)
I have no idea how much of this stuff I need to know but I would certainly
like to be able to learn more of this facinating new world and not just be
content with learning how to write a Haskell program. I just don't know
where to start.
Thanks,
Bob Davison
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