This easy-to-use, fast-moving tutorial introduces you to functional programming with Haskell. You'll learn how to use Haskell in a variety of practical ways, from short scripts to large and demanding applications. Real World Haskell takes you through the basics of functional programming at a brisk pace, and then helps you increase your understanding of Haskell in real-world issues like I/O, performance, dealing with data, concurrency, and more as you move through each chapter.
Get a practical, hands-on introduction to the Haskell language, its libraries and environment, and to the functional programming paradigm that is fast growing in importance in the software industry. This book contains excellent coverage of the Haskell ecosystem and supporting tools, include Cabal and Stack for managing projects, HUnit and QuickCheck for software testing, the Spock framework for developing web applications, Persistent and Esqueleto for database access, and parallel and distributed programming libraries. You’ll see how functional programming is gathering momentum, allowing you to express yourself in a more concise way, reducing boilerplate, and increasing the safety of your code. Haskell is an elegant and noise-free pure functional language with a long history, having a huge number of library contributors and an active community. This makes Haskell the best tool for both learning and applying functional programming, and Practical Haskell takes advantage of this to show off the language and what it can do. What You Will Learn Get started programming with Haskell Examine the different parts of the language Gain an overview of the most important libraries and tools in the Haskell ecosystem Apply functional patterns in real-world scenarios Understand monads and monad transformers Proficiently use laziness and resource management Who This Book Is For Experienced programmers who may be new to the Haskell programming language. However, some prior exposure to Haskell is recommended.
Summary Get Programming with Haskell leads you through short lessons, examples, and exercises designed to make Haskell your own. It has crystal-clear illustrations and guided practice. You will write and test dozens of interesting programs and dive into custom Haskell modules. You will gain a new perspective on programming plus the practical ability to use Haskell in the everyday world. (The 80 IQ points: not guaranteed.) Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Programming languages often differ only around the edges—a few keywords, libraries, or platform choices. Haskell gives you an entirely new point of view. To the software pioneer Alan Kay, a change in perspective can be worth 80 IQ points and Haskellers agree on the dramatic benefits of thinking the Haskell way—thinking functionally, with type safety, mathematical certainty, and more. In this hands-on book, that's exactly what you'll learn to do. What's Inside Thinking in Haskell Functional programming basics Programming in types Real-world applications for Haskell About the Reader Written for readers who know one or more programming languages. Table of Contents Lesson 1 Getting started with Haskell Unit 1 - FOUNDATIONS OF FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING Lesson 2 Functions and functional programming Lesson 3 Lambda functions and lexical scope Lesson 4 First-class functions Lesson 5 Closures and partial application Lesson 6 Lists Lesson 7 Rules for recursion and pattern matching Lesson 8 Writing recursive functions Lesson 9 Higher-order functions Lesson 10 Capstone: Functional object-oriented programming with robots! Unit 2 - INTRODUCING TYPES Lesson 11 Type basics Lesson 12 Creating your own types Lesson 13 Type classes Lesson 14 Using type classes Lesson 15 Capstone: Secret messages! Unit 3 - PROGRAMMING IN TYPES Lesson 16 Creating types with "and" and "or" Lesson 17 Design by composition—Semigroups and Monoids Lesson 18 Parameterized types Lesson 19 The Maybe type: dealing with missing values Lesson 20 Capstone: Time series Unit 4 - IO IN HASKELL Lesson 21 Hello World!—introducing IO types Lesson 22 Interacting with the command line and lazy I/O Lesson 23 Working with text and Unicode Lesson 24 Working with files Lesson 25 Working with binary data Lesson 26 Capstone: Processing binary files and book data Unit 5 - WORKING WITH TYPE IN A CONTEXT Lesson 27 The Functor type class Lesson 28 A peek at the Applicative type class: using functions in a context Lesson 29 Lists as context: a deeper look at the Applicative type class Lesson 30 Introducing the Monad type class Lesson 31 Making Monads easier with donotation Lesson 32 The list monad and list comprehensions Lesson 33 Capstone: SQL-like queries in Haskell Unit 6 - ORGANIZING CODE AND BUILDING PROJECTS Lesson 34 Organizing Haskell code with modules Lesson 35 Building projects with stack Lesson 36 Property testing with QuickCheck Lesson 37 Capstone: Building a prime-number library Unit 7 - PRACTICAL HASKELL Lesson 38 Errors in Haskell and the Either type Lesson 39 Making HTTP requests in Haskell Lesson 40 Working with JSON data by using Aeson Lesson 41 Using databases in Haskell Lesson 42 Efficient, stateful arrays in Haskell Afterword - What's next? Appendix - Sample answers to exercise
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!
This fast-moving tutorial introduces you to OCaml, an industrial-strength programming language designed for expressiveness, safety, and speed. Through the book’s many examples, you’ll quickly learn how OCaml stands out as a tool for writing fast, succinct, and readable systems code. Real World OCaml takes you through the concepts of the language at a brisk pace, and then helps you explore the tools and techniques that make OCaml an effective and practical tool. In the book’s third section, you’ll delve deep into the details of the compiler toolchain and OCaml’s simple and efficient runtime system. Learn the foundations of the language, such as higher-order functions, algebraic data types, and modules Explore advanced features such as functors, first-class modules, and objects Leverage Core, a comprehensive general-purpose standard library for OCaml Design effective and reusable libraries, making the most of OCaml’s approach to abstraction and modularity Tackle practical programming problems from command-line parsing to asynchronous network programming Examine profiling and interactive debugging techniques with tools such as GNU gdb
If you have a working knowledge of Haskell, this hands-on book shows you how to use the language’s many APIs and frameworks for writing both parallel and concurrent programs. You’ll learn how parallelism exploits multicore processors to speed up computation-heavy programs, and how concurrency enables you to write programs with threads for multiple interactions. Author Simon Marlow walks you through the process with lots of code examples that you can run, experiment with, and extend. Divided into separate sections on Parallel and Concurrent Haskell, this book also includes exercises to help you become familiar with the concepts presented: Express parallelism in Haskell with the Eval monad and Evaluation Strategies Parallelize ordinary Haskell code with the Par monad Build parallel array-based computations, using the Repa library Use the Accelerate library to run computations directly on the GPU Work with basic interfaces for writing concurrent code Build trees of threads for larger and more complex programs Learn how to build high-speed concurrent network servers Write distributed programs that run on multiple machines in a network
Haskell is one of the leading languages for teaching functional programming, enabling students to write simpler and cleaner code, and to learn how to structure and reason about programs. This introduction is ideal for beginners: it requires no previous programming experience and all concepts are explained from first principles via carefully chosen examples. Each chapter includes exercises that range from the straightforward to extended projects, plus suggestions for further reading on more advanced topics. The author is a leading Haskell researcher and instructor, well-known for his teaching skills. The presentation is clear and simple, and benefits from having been refined and class-tested over several years. The result is a text that can be used with courses, or for self-learning. Features include freely accessible Powerpoint slides for each chapter, solutions to exercises and examination questions (with solutions) available to instructors, and a downloadable code that's fully compliant with the latest Haskell release.
Haskell Programming makes Haskell as clear, painless, and practical as it can be, whether you're a beginner or an experienced hacker. Learning Haskell from the ground up is easier and works better. With our exercise-driven approach, you'll build on previous chapters such that by the time you reach the notorious Monad, it'll seem trivial.
Beginning Haskell provides a broad-based introduction to the Haskell language, its libraries and environment, and to the functional programming paradigm that is fast growing in importance in the software industry. The book takes a project-based approach to learning the language that is unified around the building of a web-based storefront. Excellent coverage is given to the Haskell ecosystem and supporting tools. These include the Cabal build tool for managing projects and modules, the HUnit and QuickCheck tools for software testing, the Scotty framework for developing web applications, Persistent and Esqueleto for database access, and also parallel and distributed programming libraries. Functional programming is gathering momentum, allowing programmers to express themselves in a more concise way, reducing boilerplate and increasing the safety of code. Indeed, mainstream languages such as C# and Java are adopting features from functional programming, and from languages implementing that paradigm. Haskell is an elegant and noise-free pure functional language with a long history, having a huge number of library contributors and an active community. This makes Haskell the best tool for both learning and applying functional programming, and Beginning Haskell the perfect book to show off the language and what it can do. Takes you through a series of projects showing the different parts of the language. Provides an overview of the most important libraries and tools in the Haskell ecosystem. Teaches you how to apply functional patterns in real-world scenarios.