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Comment by jshaqaw | Hacker News Reader

I'm a big fan of this book for anyone interested in the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Introduction-Dependent-Types-I...

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Better link... https://leanpub.com/gidti

Anyone know if there's a decent way to get a printed copy?

Or barring that, can anyone suggest a good device on which to read it and jot notes, for someone who normally prefers printed books?

I bought a basic b&w two-sided laser printer in 2011 for this purpose, and it's served me extremely well over the years. You can then take the stack of pages to a store like Staples and they will bind it for you for a few dollars.

I got the Brother HL-2270DW and I think they still make it. They even publish official Linux drivers for CUPS! Just make sure to get the extended toner cartridges (TN450), the regular ones are a ripoff.

Staples and others will also print and bind PDFs you bring in. I've done this with purchased books, sometimes they get a bit picky but usually they'll just do it.

If you can find a used Remarkable 2 or something, that's a real nice experience. Great for textbooks and comics.

You can buy them new, but I think they've moved to some fairly insane forced subscription model.

Edit: looks like the forced subscription is no longer as bad as it once was

I own one (bought new), and don't use the subscription.

It's good for note taking and reading, but uploading PDFs to it and exporting stuff from it is extremely painful and buggy.

I saw a paid FL/OSS desktop app for it at one point, but lost it and my google-fu fails me. Possibly would make it less painful and more useful.

Same.

Yeah RCU works really well, that's possibly the app you mean. http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

I've also installed koreader on mine (dual boot context switched kind of thing), I use that for comics and stuff. Downside is that the notetaking parts don't work on that, but I can just swap back for notes.

Yep, that's the one I was looking for, thanks!

Hey, author here! Thank you for recommending my book. I am always happy when someone else finds my work useful :)

> Anyone know if there's a decent way to get a printed copy?

I decided to re-publish the book with Apress, and it should be ready for print by March this year.

> How is it better than tdd in Idris book?

I would not say it is better, or worse. I read TDD and it's a great book, but it was mostly focused on practical stuff (i.e. programming in Idris), and I found it lacking the theoretical explanations (for example, what proofs are and how to do a mathematical proof, or what is a type-checker and how to implement one) which I hoped to cover in my book.

Adding onto the authors’s own review, I liked the second part on learning Idris but for my purposes the real gem was that it took me from zero prerequisites to a good intuition for dependent type theory in a very clear way that prepared me to go even deeper into topics like Homotopy Type Theory. The works I treasure are those that can build understandings of really complex topics without the crutch of a lot of prior assumed knowledge. It takes incredible clarity to do that well. This was one of my favorite book finds of recent years.

FWIW, I tried to read that book. It really didn't connect with me. Probably because I don't understand where it's going.

Does anyone have a good pointer to a different tutorial that tries to teach type-driven development?

Type Driven Development with Idris. You can find the link on the first answer of this thread. Among other things, the book shows an example of a state machine that cannot get stuck (by construction) to manage an ATM.

How is it better than tdd in Idris book?

I can’t say. I’m just a hobbyist dilettante here. Maybe that other book is great too but I don’t know it. One fun thing about a language so deep down the rabbit hole as Idris is the mean caliber of people involved is higher than average.

Looks highly interesting... Thanks for the suggestion!

Which version of Idris does this use?

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