Learn You Some Erlang now out in print | Hacker News Reader

Learn You Some Erlang now out in print

learnyousomeerlang.com

56 pointsmononcqc17 comments

Hi, I'm the author and submitted a bunch of chapters here before, which were well received.

You can buy it directly from No Starch Press with 40% off by going to http://nostar.ch/erlang_promo. Just as a reminder, it's 40% off for one week, print books come with free ebook versions (PDF, Mobi, ePub -- all DRM-free).

Thanks!

Good timing!

Picked up the ebook. nice.

I'm definitely purchasing!

I've read the online version twice now and it's been an invaluable learning tool. I started with a very shaky understanding of functional programming and LYSE kept me engaged and learning the entire time. After reading and doing some experimenting, I have a solid enough foundation now to develop professional projects in Erlang. I think my only complaint would be the chapter on FSMs... a FSM is probably not the tool I would have used to solve the example problem ;)

Thanks again!

I love LYAH, I think for learning Haskell, LYAH is the best intro, better than Real World Haskell. And at first I thought LYSE would be a sort of 1:1 mapping of LYAH, but no, LYSE treats it subject matter to a much wider breadth. There are like 20 extra chapters! And the "Don't drink too much Kool Aid" sections are a nice feature, not a lot of books call out the hype about something and give you the real low-down. Quite refreshing to get a realistic, pragmatic view instead.

Thanks to the author for making it available for free online. Im going to go purchase my copy now.

This book was my functional programming gateway drug. I couldn't (and still can't really) get into Lisps, so I wanted to learn an ML. Haskell was still too far away from my imperative background to fathom at the time, so LYAHFGG sat on my bookshelf for a while. However, somebody recommended this book for me. I cracked it open, and by that I mean clicked the read link, and was astounded at how simple it was presented.

It presents Erlang in such an easily consumable way. Learn You Some Erlang introduced me to an incredibly powerful language that was unknown to me before I started reading. The functional paradigm, concurrent processing model, and the OTP framework are presented and explained in ways that I would use to explain to someone next to the water-cooler at work. Out of every programming book I've read, Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good easily sits within my Top 5, no, Top 3 programming books of all time.

It's easy to read, informational, and funny. Consider me sold, mononcqc. You're a fantastic author, and I thank you for your work!

That's one hell of a flattering comment, thanks a lot!

Can't wait to get my preordered print copy: "Learn You Some Erlang" rocks!

Congratulations! I'll be waiting for the Japanese version :P

Read a few chapters online. Great stuff.

Congrats!

I assume the title is a play on the Erland grammar/syntax and not a lame attempt to be ghetto cool?

It's cool that the book is available online. I may need to spend some time learning Erlang.

The title is a derivation of 'Learn You a Haskell for Great Good' (http://learnyouahaskell.com/), which was created first by Miran Lipovača, and has also been published by No Starch since then.

When he made his version, I found it interesting and asked him if he'd be fine with me making one in Erlang. He said yes and I started working on it.

The first few chapters will go through similar topics and demonstrations (both go through a RPN calculator and a problem called 'Heathrow to London', for example), and then later on it takes a direction of its own.

So to answer your question directly, I have no idea if it's an attempt to be ghetto cool. It might be. I just picked a title that would fit the other book to maybe create a family of them or whatever. There's two in the group for now.

You should. Even if you don't use it day to day, it forces you think in an interesting manner to solve problems. You can carry those lessons with you as you go forward.

I couldn't find an authoritative story behind the title "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good", but people generally interpret it as a humorous take on poor translations-to-English, such as the All Your Base Are Belong To Us meme, or the title of the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Presumably a poor translation from a Scandanivian language to English. For example, in Swedish you use the reflexive verb "lära" which means both to learn and to teach. In Swedish you would say "lära dig" which does translate literally to English as "learn you" but which should get the more appropriate translation of "teach yourself".

A small correction. The proper form of "lära" in "Learn you some Erlang for great good!" (or "Teach yourself...") would be "lär", as in "Lär dig lite Erlang för (mycket/väldigt) bra!" if you translate directly. But the end of that sentence is grammatically incorrect in Swedish as well.

Either way, I doubt that it's translated from a Scandinavian language since the one who came up with the first book with that title style (Learn you a Haskell for great good!) is Slovenian.

A note to the author of the book: It looks very interesting and I just bought a copy. Hopefully I'll have time to read it soon, since I've been wanting to look into Erlang for quite some time now.

Thanks for buying it! I hope you'll enjoy it and that it will be a good source of objective information.

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