Re: book recommendation

[Fabien <fleutot+lua@...>]

Paul Graham's On Lisp is free online, and can be read without a real knowledge of Common Lisp:

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/onlisp.pdf

It has the interest of being pragmatic: freely uses a functional style whenever convenient, but not shy of imperative approaches when easier. And he stays away from gratuitous usage of academic lingo, which is refreshing in this domain.

If you look at Haskell or OCaml, most things are naturally expressed through higher order approaches. Haskell is absolutely purist with it, and therefore more mind-stretching, whereas OCaml is more pragmatic (it has 'normal' side effects, eager semantics, does care about performances...). Unfortunately, I just realized that my favorite references aren't translated in English :(

A very beautiful book by S. Peyton-Jones, on the implementation of functional programming languages:

 http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/slpj-book-1987/index.htm

It's full of brilliant examples of higher order features usage, and quite enjoyable to read. Examples are in Miranda IIRC, an ancestor of Haskell.

-- Fabien.