3 ms·

As someone who only dabbles in code, I’m very interested in starting FP first, but I find that the beginner tutorials mostly assume previous programming knowled

As someone who only dabbles in code, I’m very interested in starting FP first, but I find that the beginner tutorials mostly assume previous programming knowledge/skills, and the communities aren’t really geared towards folks who don’t have backgrounds from other areas. It is certainly possible I’m not looking in the right place for the right thing, but it should probably be an area of improvement for those communities in the future IMO.

blagovest 5y ago
Hey! I am writing an ebook about high-level programming concepts that starts off with a FP view point and builds on top of it. If that sounds interesting, I'd love to share (I am eventually going to sell it but I am fine giving away drafts)
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Absolutely, would love to take a look.
  - blagovest 5y ago
    let me know how i can contact you
Twisol 5y ago
You might like "How to Design Programs": http://htdp.org/ http://htdp.org/ It appears to exclusively work with the usual FP understanding of computation as reduction (simplification of an expression), avoiding all named mutable state. This is (in my opinion) the most important and fundamental difference between functional and imperative, and is something you miss if you try to learn FP in, say, JavaScript. It also doesn't seem to assume any prior experience with programming. The last chapter even has a section specifically directed at students who aren't computer scientists or software developers.
- srcreigh 5y ago
  The 1st year computer science programming class at Waterloo is based on the 1st edition of this book. (Not sure why not the 2nd edition--the waterloo website says so. [1]) The authors of this book are some of the major folks behind the Racket programming language. Mattias Felleisen, Matthew Flatt, Robert Findler, Shriram Krishnamurthi. You might recognize Shriram Krishnamurthi's name in the credits to PG's guide to Bel too [1] I didn't really use this book much directly - when I took that class in 2012, I mostly learned via the lectures, lecture slides, and doing via the assignments. The book is probably sufficient and you can probably talk to other people about it via Racket subreddit, IRC, etc [1]: https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs135/cc/textbook/ https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs135/cc/textbook/ [2]: https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/bellanguage.txt?t=1595850613& https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/bellanguage.txt?t=159...
moralestapia 5y ago
Yeah I agree with you in that there's definitely a steep curve for newcomers. Some work on that is needed, but it's coming along, take @blagovest's comment as an example. As with anything in life, just don't give up. Everything sucks till it's finished :D

blagovest 5y ago

Hey! I am writing an ebook about high-level programming concepts that starts off with a FP view point and builds on top of it. If that sounds interesting, I'd love to share (I am eventually going to sell it but I am fine giving away drafts)

eightysixfour 5y ago
Absolutely, would love to take a look.
- blagovest 5y ago
  let me know how i can contact you

Twisol 5y ago

You might like "How to Design Programs": http://htdp.org/ http://htdp.org/ It appears to exclusively work with the usual FP understanding of computation as reduction (simplification of an expression), avoiding all named mutable state. This is (in my opinion) the most important and fundamental difference between functional and imperative, and is something you miss if you try to learn FP in, say, JavaScript. It also doesn't seem to assume any prior experience with programming. The last chapter even has a section specifically directed at students who aren't computer scientists or software developers.

srcreigh 5y ago
The 1st year computer science programming class at Waterloo is based on the 1st edition of this book. (Not sure why not the 2nd edition--the waterloo website says so. [1]) The authors of this book are some of the major folks behind the Racket programming language. Mattias Felleisen, Matthew Flatt, Robert Findler, Shriram Krishnamurthi. You might recognize Shriram Krishnamurthi's name in the credits to PG's guide to Bel too [1] I didn't really use this book much directly - when I took that class in 2012, I mostly learned via the lectures, lecture slides, and doing via the assignments. The book is probably sufficient and you can probably talk to other people about it via Racket subreddit, IRC, etc [1]: https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs135/cc/textbook/ https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs135/cc/textbook/ [2]: https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/bellanguage.txt?t=1595850613& https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/bellanguage.txt?t=159...

moralestapia 5y ago

Yeah I agree with you in that there's definitely a steep curve for newcomers. Some work on that is needed, but it's coming along, take @blagovest's comment as an example. As with anything in life, just don't give up. Everything sucks till it's finished :D