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Functional programming books review

alexott.net

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Re: Functional programming books review

#12

Post by alexott »

OnionChamp wrote: post #10

This is a list of amazon referral links to books related to functional programming, with a ~2-sentence blurb about each that could be written in 10 minutes with the help of google. It's a nice way for him to make some referral money but otherwise it's nothing special. The guy probably hasn't opened half of the books here.

please, generate it yourself (without looking into this list) and track how much time you need to do this...

I've compiled this list long time ago as an article for Russian FP journal, and it takes relatively much time to track new books, obtain them (paying myself or get through Safari Online), read or at least briefly go through it, and write a short review...

P.S. regarding the referral money - don't think that it generates a ton of money - it's barely enough to buy one inexpensive book per year...

Re: Functional programming books review

#14

Post by eru »

alexott wrote: post #12
OnionChamp wrote: post #10

This is a list of amazon referral links to books related to functional programming, with a ~2-sentence blurb about each that could be written in 10 minutes with the help of google. It's a nice way for him to make some referral money but otherwise it's nothing special. The guy probably hasn't opened half of the books here.

please, generate it yourself (without looking into this list) and track how much time you need to do this... I've compiled this list long time ago as an article for Russian FP journal, and it takes relatively much time to track new books, obtain them (paying myself or get through Safari Online), read or at least briefly go through it, and write a short review... P.S. regarding the referral money - don't think that it…

You can get review copies for free from most publishers. (Though, if you are making decent money as a programmer, that's probably more effort than just buying the books.)

Re: Functional programming books review

#15

Post by alexott »

eru wrote: post #14
alexott wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please, generate it yourself (without looking into this list) and track how much time you need to do this... I've compiled this list long time ago as an article for Russian FP journal, and it takes relatively much time to track new books, obtain them (paying myself or get through Safari Online), read or at least briefly go through it, and write a short review... P.S. regarding the referral money - don't think that it…

You can get review copies for free from most publishers. (Though, if you are making decent money as a programmer, that's probably more effort than just buying the books.)

Yes, I sometimes receive the books from publishers, but the main resource is time :-(

Re: Functional programming books review

#16

Post by epsylon »

platz wrote: post #8
dschiptsov wrote: post #6

This is excellent review, no doubt, by a well known scholar.) The only problem is that there are so many books and so little time. So, to get a quick and productive crash-course I would recommend just a few selected resources. * SICP based course CS 61A by Brian Harvey (Youtube) * HtDP2 and a wonderful course based on it - Introduction to Systematic Program Design by Gregor Kiczales (the author of The Art Of Metaobje…

Grossman's PL course is not the hardest of them all, but it did provide had the most value, compared to the other Coursera courses I've taken. Truly excellent.

I second that, it's been the best course I've taken up on coursera so far (with Dan Boneh's crypto). The lectures are great, but the best for me was the high quality provided course notes. I read those in my morning and evening commutes and I didn't even have to watch the videos!

The exercises were well crafted, guiding you part by part to build your program, and challenging enough that you learned something valuable. It definitely made me interested in exploring more the three languages presented - ML, Racket and Ruby.

I'm currently taking the second Scala course and I have to say it's a bit of a disappointment so far. Martin Odersky's part was good, but I didn't really like Erik Meijer's teaching style (I understood Futures and Promises better after reading a few articles about these). I haven't caught up with Roland Kuhn's part yet.

However I've been incredibly frustrated with the exercises. They are tedious, but for the wrong reasons: you have to make a lot of guesses on what are exactly the semantics of what you're supposed to implement, sifting through the forum and the FAQ for relevant information. After you've submitted, you now have to wait for a long time (between 20 and 100 minutes) for the automatic grader to tell you whether your guess about what exactly you had to implement was right or wrong.

It's still an interesting course, and it's worth just for the sake of getting your hands into some Scala code, but there's that caveat.

Re: Functional programming books review

#17

Post by bad_user »

I don't like this article. Lots of people do a Google-search on books on various topics, then publish a blog article without having read them. I'm seeing books in there that are awful choices.

And oh look, the Amazon articles are tagged, which means the author gets affiliate compensations. And what do you know, it's the hollyday season, so people buy stuff on Amazon.

And don't get me wrong, I'm fine with that, I did it myself, but at least read the freaking books that you're recommending, before recommending them.

Re: Functional programming books review

#18

Post by alexott »

bad_user wrote: post #17

I don't like this article. Lots of people do a Google-search on books on various topics, then publish a blog article without having read them. I'm seeing books in there that are awful choices. And oh look, the Amazon articles are tagged, which means the author gets affiliate compensations. And what do you know, it's the hollyday season, so people buy stuff on Amazon. And don't get me wrong, I'm fine with that, I did…

Why do you think that I didn't read the books? Do you know anything about me to make such comments?

P.S. About affiliation links - it's written clearly in the 2nd paragraph of the page.

Re: Functional programming books review

#19

Post by agumonkey »

platz wrote: post #8
dschiptsov wrote: post #6

This is excellent review, no doubt, by a well known scholar.) The only problem is that there are so many books and so little time. So, to get a quick and productive crash-course I would recommend just a few selected resources. * SICP based course CS 61A by Brian Harvey (Youtube) * HtDP2 and a wonderful course based on it - Introduction to Systematic Program Design by Gregor Kiczales (the author of The Art Of Metaobje…

Grossman's PL course is not the hardest of them all, but it did provide had the most value, compared to the other Coursera courses I've taken. Truly excellent.

What background did you have ? I remember people who knew a bit of lisp and fp were fine, but many newcomers went mad when it came to meta-levels and interpretation.
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