Learn You a Haskell is now in print

[arespredator]

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.

[runevault]

I went through a decent portion of it online a while back myself, and I ended up grabbing it during O'Reilly's funding drive for Japan both for that effort and to support the author.

Of the Haskell tutorials/books I've read it made me feel like I was getting more out of it (main other one I read was RWH, which isn't bad but felt... dry? and was a tough push).

[Stormbringer]

Wasn't there some virtual pushing and shoving over whether this was just a gross rip-off of a python book? Or am I confusing it with another? (Nitpicks welcome for once, so long as you can provide a link to the thing I was thinking of :D )

[angrycoder]

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.

[microtonal]

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.

[teaspoon]

I think it could even be appropriate for an analytically minded non-programmer. I'm going to try it on my sister, who is a mathematician.

[losvedir]

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.

Guess I should buy the print version of the book to support the author....

[bonus500]

haha glad you liked that! avril is so dreamy ...

[ktf]

I second that. That's one of my favorite gags in the entire book.

[Cherad]

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...)

Thank you Miran for a great haskell book, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on a print copy.

[bonus500]

thanks for buying!!

[oscilloscope]

LYAH is fun and accessible. A great introduction to the advanced concepts in Haskell and the power of functional programming.

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.

Thanks Miran!

[bonus500]

haha, thanks for reading. sometimes it's really cool to have something spark your interest and then it just snowballs from there

[olliesaunders]

Some very light criticism of this book: sometimes the author makes things a little too 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.

So these days I prefer other texts but I turn to LYAH when I’m really confused.

All that said it is a great work, as many have said, and a great boon to Haskell and the functional programming world.

[rwmj]

Slightly OT: Can someone point to a good, comprehensive tutorial on how to call C code from Haskell?

Background: libguestfs Haskell bindings need a lot of love, and the FFI deeply confuses me.

[joelburget]

I've been writing some ffi myself code lately. The real world haskell chapter on ffi has been helpful. They use a bit of hsc2hs on top of plain ffi. I've also been using c2hs which does a lot of the work for you (a bit higher level) and have found Edward Z Yang's guide helpful for that.

[ionfish]

Aside from the reading material others have suggested, I strongly recommend the #haskell channel on Freenode. The people there are extremely helpful and friendly.

[happy4crazy]

LYAH is fantastic. Lots of really beautiful material, and it's choke-on-your-coffee funny.

[Calamitous]

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.

[FreakLegion]

I can't speak to how easy PragProgs is to work with, but it seems their 'much higher royalties' are just creative bookkeeping. Where other publishers base royalties on a book's gross, PragProgs uses net. They're somewhere between traditional and vanity publishing in that regard.

[sigzero]

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.

[jlees]

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. :)

(Despite it being a free ebook I vastly prefer print, another problem I'm trying to figure out and solve...)

[squidsoup]

Have you tried reading technical books on a Kindle DX? It's quite a nice experience.

[vessenes]

I'm learning haskell from him right now; totally enjoyable introduction to a new language, and functional programming.

It won't be my only haskell book, but I'm glad it was my first!

[thurn]

Does this also mean that the online edition has been completed and there will be no future chapters?

[bonus500]

for now!! but in the future who knows. people might want chapters that focus around making real useful stuff with the knowledge, so that's a possibility

[tomazmuraus]

Awesome book (+ pretty pictures).

I have read it online about a year ago, but I still ordered my copy from Amazon.

[revorad]

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?

[michael_dorfman]

I've got a (small-compared-to-Amazon) online bookstore, and publisher's discounts to retailers like me generally range from 30-50%. I imagine that Amazon, with their volumes, gets more favorable terms. Supposing they get a 50% discount from the publisher in this case-- I imagine they are getting more, but bear with me-- that means that they are making $3 on the book, net postage (since they charge the customer a separate fee to cover the postage and handling). $3/sale is not a lot, but multiplied by X million, it adds up.

O'Reilly survives because as a publisher, they are making money on every book sold, whether you buy it directly from them or through a retailer. Their direct retail sales are just a sideline.

[bonus500]

it's a mystery! but i'd recommend buying it directly from No Starch because you get the free ebook and swag, plus more money goes directly into my mouth this way

[cageface]

As an O'Reilly member I seem to have a standing 2-for-1 book deal, so I just batch up my orders. I really like their ongoing updates and early releases and the DRM-free formats are a big plus.

[rubergly]

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.

[davelee]

after reading it online, I preordered it right away (last December). Had to get some money in Miran's account. Glad it's done and ready to go.