I'm trying to crack into this functional programming paradigm. My interest
in it was piqued by my experiences with Dylan which seems to be an impure
functional programming language with a large number of hygienic macros
which make it imitate an imperative, OOP language.
After doing some digging around on the net, I came to the conclusion that
Haskell is probably my best choice for learning about pure functional
programming. (Its being a pure functional programming language was a major
point in its favour in this regard.:-) I downloaded a copy of Hugs98
(thanks to whoever is responsible for that package!) and started to tinker.
And hit a brick wall.
The problem is the paradigm or, more accurately, my inability to wrap my
brain around it. The style of programming involved is too alien for me
(although I am a big fan of closures now that I have a language that
supports them properly). Reading the source code in the libraries doesn't
help a lot since, without even a basic understanding, I really don't know
where to look for what tips to point me in the right direction.
I've come to the conclusion that I need a book; a book which deals
primarily with learning functional programming as a paradigm (although
using Haskell as the illustrative language has obvious benefits). Ideally,
if the language illustrating the concepts isn't Haskell, the language
provided should have some Win32 version available so that I can follow
along and tinker.
Can anybody recommend such a book to me?
--
Michael T. Richter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.igs.net/~mtr/
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