Ask HN: Book recommendations to learn functional programming

17 points by skywalker212 5y ago ↗ HN

Hope my fellow hackers are doing well. I want to learn more about functional programming and start thinking about problem solutions using the functional way. I would like some book recommendations to get started. Thank you in advance!

8 comments

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ignoranceprior 5y ago ↗

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and How to Design Programs are good intros to functional programming in Scheme. They're both free online.

skywalker212 5y ago ↗

Thanks!

mparis 5y ago ↗

A freebie online using python: http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/functional-pro...

A freebie online using Haskell: http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters

I don’t write much Haskell any more but learning it will force FP into your brain. Good luck :)

skywalker212 5y ago ↗

Thanks!

longnguyen 5y ago ↗

This is always my favorite: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming [1]

[1] : https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide

johnsonjo 5y ago ↗

Yeah the guy who made this is Brian Lonsdorf he has two or three courses on FrontendMasters which are really quite stellar!

poletopole 5y ago ↗

The only book I found helpful in learning functional programming was Lambda calculus and combinators by Hindley. Although you can find it online for free it’s worth buying. What I discovered was that books on Haskell simply weren’t enough to understand the language, you really do need to understand lambda calculus first.

runT1ME 5y ago ↗

I really recommend Functional Programming in Scala. It takes a first principles approach to Functional Programming and starts with the idea of "how do we write programs if we don't mutate state"? Lots of exercises, from small to longer, and ends up being very practical.