It's astonishing to me that a computer science student wrote such a good book. It's funny, witty, the drawings are great, and the author explains quite complicated concepts of functional programming very clearly. I've already read this book a year ago online, yet I'm still gonna buy it just to support the author.
No Starch has really been knocking out of the park lately with Land of Lisp, Eloquent Javascript, The Linux Programming Interface, and now Learn You a Haskell. They are also one of the few publishers who's typesetting doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out.
I can now confidently recommend a book to Haskell-aspiring friends that is easy to read and incredibly fun at the same time. It will be on my bookshelf next to Land of Lisp.
Great guide! Since the author himself seems to be reading these comments, I finally have a chance to say just how hysterically funny the bit about analyzing the Avril Lavigne song line by line was. I laughed so hard when I got to that part.<p>Guess I should buy the print version of the book to support the author....
Just bought this from No Starch Press for delivery to the UK. Amazon UK has it for £35.49, so cheaper to get it shipped over - madness! (I'll take my chances on the import taxes...)<p>Thank you Miran for a great haskell book, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on a print copy.
LYAH is fun and accessible. A great introduction to the advanced concepts in Haskell and the power of functional programming.<p>It made me better at javascript and python. It rekindled my interest in math and algebras. It makes me want to do battle with complexity in nuanced, clever ways.<p>Thanks Miran!
Some very light criticism of this book: sometimes the author makes things a little <i>too</i> easy by spelling out stuff that I’d rather have to work out myself. It’s easy to fall into the temptation of just reading and reading without really trying out what you’ve learnt because everything always seems so easy to understand but you don’t really internalize it properly until you’ve actually used it a lot.<p>So these days I prefer other texts but I turn to LYAH when I’m really confused.<p>All that said it is a great work, as many have said, and a great boon to Haskell and the functional programming world.
Slightly OT: Can someone point to a good, comprehensive tutorial on how to call C code from Haskell?<p>Background: libguestfs Haskell bindings need a lot of love, and the FFI deeply confuses me.
I'm curious how the author liked working with NoStarch. I know one of PragProg's big selling points is that they're much easier to deal with and provide much higher royalties than traditional tech publishers; I wonder if NoStarch has taken a similar approach.
Kudos to the author on this book. I think it is great that Haskell will have such a "fun" book to teach the concepts of programming in Haskell. That should lower the learning barrier a bit. More so since everything is layed out in easy to understand terms.
Just bought it. I'm researching ways to teach computer science and this has come up in so many threads it's not even funny. :)<p>(Despite it being a free ebook I vastly prefer print, another problem I'm trying to figure out and solve...)
I'm learning haskell from him right now; totally enjoyable introduction to a new language, and functional programming.<p>It won't be my only haskell book, but I'm glad it was my first!
The same book is available for $25.56 on Amazon (vs $44.95 on No Starch and O'Reilly). How can Amazon afford such a huge discount on a new book? And how does O'Reilly survive with such competition?
huh. I was just looking through No Starch Press's catalog last week after someone here mentioned the Manga Guide to Databases, and I saw this, but didn't realize it was only online before.