Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming [Paperback]

Simpon Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1996 | ISBN-10: 0201403579 | ISBN-13: 978-0201403572

Named in honor of Haskell Curry, whose work has had a profound influence on functional programming, the Haskell language is growing rapidly in popularity - especially as a vehicle to teach introductory programming concepts. This book introduces Haskell at a level appropriate for those with little or no prior experience of functional programming. The emphasis throughout is on crafting programs, solving problems and avoiding common pitfalls. In three parts the book *first builds a foundation, focusing on programming basic types and lists, using first-order, non-polymorphic programs *then looks at the three ideas of higher-order functions, polymorphism and type classes, which together give modern functional programming its distinctive flavour and power *finally discusses larger-scale programming, supported by an exploration of user-defined types, modules, lazy evaluation and IO programming using monads.Key Features *An analysis of program behavior and efficiency *A strong emphasis on software engineering and problem-solving techniques *An optional thread on proving that programs have the properties required of them which runs through the text *Software modification and re-use are emphasised in the discussion of design issues *Design advice is supplemented with examples and case studies of varying size and complexity *Appendices contain support material of various kinds - pointers to sites from which implementations of Haskell and Gofer can be obtained; common error messages; a glossary of programming terms; functions from parts of the Haskell standard preludes *Over 400 exercises of varying difficulty Haskell systems *The text is designed to be used with any Haskell implementation, such as Hugs (Haskell Users Gofer System) whose interface and error messages are described in some detail. Note that the Hugs system described is Hugs 1.01; the June 1996 Yale release of the system is similar, but implements the full Haskell module system rather than projects as stated in the text; full details of the small number of differences are given in the code files.*The material takes account of the latest revision to the language definition, Haskell 1.3 *The text can also be used with the Gofer system. 0201403579B04062001

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES / FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING / HASKELL

Haskell
The Craft of Functional Programming Second Edition

Simon Thompson

The second edition of Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming is essential reading for beginners to functional programming and newcomers to the Haskell programming language. The emphasis is on the process of crafting programs and the text contains many examples and running case studies, as well as advice on program design, testing, problem solving and how to avoid common pitfalls.

Building on the strengths of the first edition, the book includes many new and improved features:
· Complete coverage of Haskell 98, the standard version of Haskell which will be stable and supported by implementations for years to come.
· An emphasis on software engineering principles, encouraging a disciplined approach to building reusable libraries of software components.
· Detailed coverage of the Hugs interpreter with an appendix covering other implementations.
· A running case study of pictures emphasizes the built-in functions which appear in the standard prelude and libraries. It is also used to give an early preview of some of the more complex language features, such as higher-order functions.
· List comprehensions and the standard functions over lists are covered before recursion.
· Early coverage of polymorphism supporting the `toolkit' approach and encouraging the reuse of built-in functions and types.
· Extensive reference material containing details of further reading in books, journals and on the World Wide Web.
· Accompanying Web Site supporting the book, containing all the program code, further teaching materials and other useful resources.


About the author
Simon Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Kent. His research and teaching interests include functional programming and logical aspects of computer science. Simon has written two other books: Miranda: The Craft of Functional Programming and Type Theory and Functional Programming.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Simon Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Kent. His research and teaching interests include functional programming and logical aspects of computer science. 0201403579AB04062001

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley (August 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201403579
• ISBN-13: 978-0201403572
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,564,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Simon Thompson is Professor of Logic and Computation in the Computing Laboratory of the University of Kent, where he has taught computing at undergraduate and postgraduate levels for the past twenty five years, and where he has been department head for the last six.

His research work has centered on functional programming: program verification, type systems, and most recently development of software tools for functional programming languages. His team has built the HaRe tool for refactoring Haskell programs, and is currently developing Wrangler to do the same for Erlang. His research has been funded by various agencies including EPSRC and the European Framework programme. His training is as a mathematician: he has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge and a D.Phil. in mathematical logic from Oxford.

He has written four books in his field of interest; Type Theory and Functional Programming published in 1991; Miranda: The Craft of Functional Programming (1995), Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (2nd ed. 1999) and Erlang Programming (with Francesco Cesarini, 2009). Apart from the last, which is published by O'Reilly, these are all published by Addison Wesley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love it!, May 18, 2001

By 

Ronald J. Legere (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

This was my first text on Haskell, and it certainly got me up to speed on all the essential elements. I prefer Hudaks text for most things, but there is no good reason not to own every Haskell book you can get your hands on. This book is especially strong on learning how to prove things about programs.

It doesnt get to Monads until near the end, but perhaps that is a good thing. It depends on what you want out of a text.

I used this text for self study, and it is well suited to such a task.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review from a first-year computer science perspective, March 18, 2006

By 

Ben Carbery (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

Most of the reviewers for this text so far seem to be more experienced programmers or computer scientists. So I am writing this review to give a different perspective.

My uni has this year chosen Haskell as the INTRODUCTORY language, apparently because it:

1) Is a clear implementation of some fundamental programming concepts

2) Puts everyone on an equal footing, since no-one is likely to have studied it (or even another functional language) before.

I have little formal background but have been messing around with scripting languages like TCL for a couple of years.

The initial transition to thinking from a functional perspective seemed very difficult. The idea of recursion as opposed "just sticking it in a loop" took a while to stick.

But I have found simply by working through the book I have progressed quickly and in only a few weeks it has become quite natural to think in a Haskell way.

I attribute this to the excellent layout of the book, but more importantly the frequent exercises provided throughout each chapter. As my lecturer is fond of saying, practice is the only way to learn programming, and it is by exploring the introduced concepts in this way that I feel my learning of Haskell has been most effective.

The book is paced, if anything, a little slowly. But since I am someone who likes to gain a thorough understanding of topics I don't mind this. The exercises themselves are well thought out and tend to offer an increasing amount of challenge. Something that conceptually seems trivial can be given an interesting twist when it comes to writing a function.

I suppose experienced programmers may have covered similar kinds of exercises in other languages so it may not be quite so interesting, and they will be more wrestling with the mechanics of Haskell than gaining theorertical insights. However this highlights it's usefulness to a beginning programmer.

It has been said that learning a functional language increases your abilities in other languages. Whether this is true for me I haven't discovered yet, but certainly it has given me far more insight than I could have got from a scripting langauge about what is actually happening in a program.

This really is a well-written and surprisingly accessible book considering the typical Haskell programmer. I can highly recommend it.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting introduction, January 17, 2001

By 

Doug201 (New York City, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

I read this book as my first book towards learning functional programming and Haskell specifically. With many years of (imperative and object oriented) software engineering behind me, the concept of functional programming was interesting.

The good parts of this book are that it is extremely well organized. It includes many helpful exercises (which I highly recommend) and a very good introduction (the first ten or dozen chapters).

Later on in the book, however, I found increasing difficulty. The author picks up the pace of the material without, in my opinion, justification. By the end, he covers what, from reading several other books and many online articles, I consider the most confusing topic in a single chapter or two. Reading it several times, I'm still uncertain how to build an I/O intensive program in Haskell, and/or what a Monad truly is and/or how exception processing is properly handled.

That notwithstanding (because it seems to be a fairly common complaint of new Haskell students) I quite enjoyed the book. Before you buy it, though, you may wish to consider books from Paul Hudak (a Yale professor and nice guy) and Richard Bird, both of whom have written on Haskell; Paul actually taught a class which I avoided back in the early 90s - too bad, too, because then I wouldn't have to start from scratch so many years later.