3 ms·

I haven't read either of them, but Bird has a just-released book out called "Thinking Functionally with Haskell". http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Functionally-H

• pash 12y ago
  I've not read Bird's new book, but the table of contents suggests it's a more modern but more basic introduction to pure functional programming. The new book covers monadic IO and monadic parsing, for example, but doesn't discuss the space and time efficiency of lazy versus strict evaluation. I really like the oldies because they seem to express the joyful, revelatory aspects of functional programming better; more modern texts tend, in my opinion, to get bogged down in the mundane realities and masochism before properly motivating their audience. The first great truth of Haskell is that imperative programming is unsatisfactory, and if you haven't realized that yet, you're not ready to move on. If you don't want to commit to Bird and Wadler's text, at least try Hughes's excellent paper (linked in my grandfather post); if that turns you on, you'll want to read the book.