Ask HN: Book recommendations to learn functional programming

17 points·skywalker212··8 comments

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!

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

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

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

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.

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 :)

Thanks!

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.

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

Thanks!

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