The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming | Hacker News Reader

The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming

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66 pointszackham8 comments

The Haskell Road rocks my world. It’s an amazing book, especially for programmers who want to become better at discrete math. (No Haskell experience is required, and no math beyond high school algebra.) I read about six chapters in a weekend (ouch!), and my understanding of logic, relations and functions improved dramatically.

In general, doing abstract math in Haskell makes it a lot more accessible to me. In particular, it’s nice knowing the types of all the equations.

Completely agree. I read (a good bit of, not yet finished) this book along with The Essence of Discrete Mathematics (http://www.amazon.com/Essence-Discrete-Mathematics-Neville-D...) and came out of both with a pretty understanding of discrete mathematics and deeper understanding of programming (especially around sets). With only a high school mathematics background and very light Haskell experience, the material was still completely approachable. Demonstrating these concepts with programming made it so much more concrete for me. /ramble

Yes! When I do math in college I often get a nagging feeling of vagueness. What is the significance of this theorem? Are the consequences of this theorem "empirically" testable in the real world? For example by running a computer program that tests many examples.

I have spent the last year or so having false starts on learning Haskell; I would reach an impasse as soon as I start asking "what will I use this for." Once I decided to learn Haskell as a companion language for learning more math and computer science, I was actually able to stay on track.

If you have any other books along the lines of this one to recommend I am all ears. The time I have spent on these sorts of academic pursuits have paid off incredibly well in the real world of programming for a living day-to-day.

Talking about books I would recommend Introduction to Functional Programming 1st edition (Prentice Hall 1988 -- the second, paradoxically, is "spoiled" by Haskell), by Bird and Wadler.

Could you expand on what you mean by it being spoiled by Haskell?

Agreed 100%. Haskell shines the brightest in Academic settings.

I have this book on my shelf, waiting for me to finish all the other books I'm reading at the moment. But probably the motivating comments in this post will help me get there faster.

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