Recommended Reading

Jeremy visited Simon Thompson at the University of Kent to find out about Haskell textbooks. Simon has a huge collection of programming language books.

Book Recommendations

Simon mentions four textbooks in the video interview. Below are links to the websites for each book.

Real World Haskell

Real World Haskell is a typical O’Reilly programming language book. The content is available online for free, along with reader comments.

Learn You a Haskell

Learn You a Haskell is a very informal introduction, but it does a great job of explaining complex concepts. You can read it online for free. Some people don’t like the author’s sense of humour, but I thought it was mostly ok.

Programming in Haskell

Simon mentioned that Graham Hutton is bringing out a 2nd edition of his textbook. Since the interview, Programming in Haskell has been released. We highly recommend it as a simple and succinct introduction to Haskell programming.

Publishers Cambridge University Press have kindly set up a discount code that will allow FutureLearn Haskell learners to get 25% off the price of the new edition of Programming in Haskell if they purchase from the CUP website. The discount code is PIHMOOC and this is simply entered in the Subtotal and Discount Code section when checking out to get 25% off. This works on both the UK and USA sites from the publisher.

Haskell: the Craft of Functional Programming

Simon was slightly coy about his own textbook in the interview. However we have found it very helpful while we were preparing this course. There are lots of copies of this book in Glasgow University library, so presumably our students find it helpful too!

Other Resources

Haskell Programming from First Principles is a great textbook and increasingly popular in the Haskell community. Christopher Allen and Julie Moronuki are talented teachers of Haskell to novices. The book is content complete and will soon have the final and fully edited release, but you can purchase access to the ebook now. You get immediate access to the latest ‘version’ and updates as the book grows.

Online Help

We hope you find this course to be well-supported, in terms of the learning materials and the interactive comments. We have a team of tutors to support the learning community.

Other online sites also provide advice to Haskell beginners. For instance, the Haskell Cafe mailing list is a friendly place to post queries. There are also sub-reddits like haskellquestions.

In the comments section, please let us know which resources you find most useful.