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Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!

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LYAH Sample 1LYAH Sample 2
A Beginner's Guide
by Miran Lipovača

April 2011, 400 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-59327-283-8

It's all in the name: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! is a hilarious, illustrated guide to this complex functional language. Packed with the author's original artwork, pop culture references, and most importantly, useful example code, this book teaches functional fundamentals in a way you never thought possible.

You'll start with the kid stuff: basic syntax, recursion, types and type classes. Then once you've got the basics down, the real black belt master-class begins: you'll learn to use applicative functors, monads, zippers, and all the other mythical Haskell constructs you've only read about in storybooks.

As you work your way through the author's imaginative (and occasionally insane) examples, you'll learn to:

  • Laugh in the face of side effects as you wield purely functional programming techniques
  • Use the magic of Haskell's "laziness" to play with infinite sets of data
  • Organize your programs by creating your own types, type classes, and modules
  • Use Haskell's elegant input/output system to share the genius of your programs with the outside world

Short of eating the author's brain, you will not find a better way to learn this powerful language than reading Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!

Bonus: ebook is in color!

About the Author

Miran Lipovača is a computer science student in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In addition to his passion for Haskell, he enjoys boxing, playing bass guitar, and, of course, drawing. He has a fascination with dancing skeletons and the number 71, and when he walks through automatic doors he pretends that he’s actually opening them with his mind.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Starting Out
Chapter 2: Believe the Type
Chapter 3: Syntax in Functions
Chapter 4: Hello Recursion!
Chapter 5: Higher-Order Functions
Chapter 6: Modules
Chapter 7: Making Our Own Types and Type Classes
Chapter 8: Input and Output
Chapter 9: More Input and More Output
Chapter 10: Functionally Solving Problems
Chapter 11: Applicative Functors
Chapter 12: Monoids
Chapter 13: A Fistful of Monads
Chapter 14: For a Few Monads More
Chapter 15: Zippers

View the detailed Table of Contents (PDF)

View the Index (PDF)

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Reviews

"The thing that's most impressive about Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! is how well-written it is. This book is just fantastic."
—Gregory Collins, Google Switzerland (Read More)

"Managed to walk me through all important Haskell concepts without ever making any of the material sound complicated. A good introduction to functional programming."
—Marijn Haverbeke, author of Eloquent JavaScript

"This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it as the first book on Haskell—and possibly even the second."
—Michael Fogus, author of The Joy of Clojure

"A fantastic, fun, thorough introduction to Haskell, spiced up by Miran's great sense of humor and zany illustrations."
—Brent Yorgey, The Math Less Traveled (Read More)

"Miran Lipovača has done a fantastic job of writing a book aimed at beginning Haskell programmers. I like his very straightforward writing style of introducing each topic with the minimum of complexity."
—Bryan Bell, Math and More (Read More)

"This is a remarkable book and may be just what this beautiful language was missing."
—Michael Kohl, Citizen428 (Read More)

"This book is the best way I know to obtain the Haskell foundation you need for fluency."
—Jeremy Bowers, Jerf.org (Read More)

"This is a terrific book. It makes what might otherwise seem impenetrable mathy-code and makes it fun and approachable."
—Simon Reynolds (Read More)

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