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There's "Real World OCaml" (new) and "Real World Haskell" (a bit out of date). But my favourite introductory text, which is not free, is Graham Hutton's "Progra

There's "Real World OCaml" (new) and "Real World Haskell" (a bit out of date). But my favourite introductory text, which is not free, is Graham Hutton's "Programming in Haskell".

kumarvvr 9y ago
Thanks for the info. Just curious, what sort of problems are strongly typed languages most suited for? In the sense that which class of problems can be solved using them leading to elegant solutions.
- willtim 9y ago
  I use Haskell professionally in the area of quantitative finance in a large team with a multi-million line codebase. Everything is built upon domain specific libraries, sometimes many layers deep. And these libraries are constantly changing to keep pace with the business. Strong types tell us early when things are broken. Others are attempting to use Python for similar projects, but it isn't fun (we have some of their alumni). Haskell's effect typing also helps us. For example, for reproducible calculations, it is critical that no data is pulled-in via a backdoor (i.e. a side effect). Even reading and using the current system datetime is something we want to prevent. This can be expressed in the types using Haskell.
  - kumarvvr 9y ago
    So, highly reliable and completely transparent data processing. Awesome. Very interesting to know. I always assumed financial data processing, HFT, etc are done in java / C# or other mainstream languages. And yes, in such a situation, Python will not be an easy fit. Thanks a lot for sharing the info. Have been wanting to learn functional programming for a long time now. Specifically, I am planning to build computation systems based on Haskell, Scala, etc which sit behind a Message Queue server. Just to isolate the computation part from other mundane activities like HTTP request processing.
- tome 9y ago
  > what sort of problems are strongly typed languages most suited for I'm going to volunteer an answert to a slightly different question. "What sort of problems are strongly typed languages suited for?". They are suited for general purpose programming.
- yen223 9y ago
  There's a famous quote by Linus Torvalds: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." Even when prototyping, I find that nailing down the data structures from the get-go makes subsequent code-writing much easier. A lot of times, the code kind of falls out naturally when you've figured out the data structures you're working with. Strongly-typed languages give you a nice way to define data structures.
  - jejones3141 9y ago
    And Fred Brooks, from _The Mythical Man-Month_: "Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious."
  - paganel 9y ago
    It has been my experience that “data-structures” in real world situations and especially within code directly facing consumers varies a lot more compared to what any pre-implementation data design process can predict (I’d even say that the structure of a lousy data-input form on a god-forsaken website has the potential to change a lot more often compared to the intrinsic structure of the Linux kernel). Dynamic languages (like python or even php) are very good at tackling this real life situation, hence their popularity.
    - Rapzid 9y ago
      They are very good at letting you make the quick easy change while providing no helping hand in ensuring all your code is utilizing the data structure's new schema correctly They are "easy" in that sense which makes them popular with a subset if developers, while another subset loathes the terrible language services/tooling. Incidentally many dynamic languages seem to have attempted to bolt on some faux type system; python type annotations, phpdoc, jsdoc, type specs, etc, etc.

There's "Real World OCaml" (new) and "Real World Haskell" (a bit out of date). But my favourite introductory text, which is not free, is Graham Hutton's "Programming in Haskell".

kumarvvr 9y ago

Thanks for the info. Just curious, what sort of problems are strongly typed languages most suited for? In the sense that which class of problems can be solved using them leading to elegant solutions.

willtim 9y ago
I use Haskell professionally in the area of quantitative finance in a large team with a multi-million line codebase. Everything is built upon domain specific libraries, sometimes many layers deep. And these libraries are constantly changing to keep pace with the business. Strong types tell us early when things are broken. Others are attempting to use Python for similar projects, but it isn't fun (we have some of their alumni). Haskell's effect typing also helps us. For example, for reproducible calculations, it is critical that no data is pulled-in via a backdoor (i.e. a side effect). Even reading and using the current system datetime is something we want to prevent. This can be expressed in the types using Haskell.
- kumarvvr 9y ago
  So, highly reliable and completely transparent data processing. Awesome. Very interesting to know. I always assumed financial data processing, HFT, etc are done in java / C# or other mainstream languages. And yes, in such a situation, Python will not be an easy fit. Thanks a lot for sharing the info. Have been wanting to learn functional programming for a long time now. Specifically, I am planning to build computation systems based on Haskell, Scala, etc which sit behind a Message Queue server. Just to isolate the computation part from other mundane activities like HTTP request processing.
tome 9y ago
> what sort of problems are strongly typed languages most suited for I'm going to volunteer an answert to a slightly different question. "What sort of problems are strongly typed languages suited for?". They are suited for general purpose programming.
yen223 9y ago
There's a famous quote by Linus Torvalds: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." Even when prototyping, I find that nailing down the data structures from the get-go makes subsequent code-writing much easier. A lot of times, the code kind of falls out naturally when you've figured out the data structures you're working with. Strongly-typed languages give you a nice way to define data structures.
- jejones3141 9y ago
  And Fred Brooks, from _The Mythical Man-Month_: "Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious."
- paganel 9y ago
  It has been my experience that “data-structures” in real world situations and especially within code directly facing consumers varies a lot more compared to what any pre-implementation data design process can predict (I’d even say that the structure of a lousy data-input form on a god-forsaken website has the potential to change a lot more often compared to the intrinsic structure of the Linux kernel). Dynamic languages (like python or even php) are very good at tackling this real life situation, hence their popularity.
  - Rapzid 9y ago
    They are very good at letting you make the quick easy change while providing no helping hand in ensuring all your code is utilizing the data structure's new schema correctly They are "easy" in that sense which makes them popular with a subset if developers, while another subset loathes the terrible language services/tooling. Incidentally many dynamic languages seem to have attempted to bolt on some faux type system; python type annotations, phpdoc, jsdoc, type specs, etc, etc.