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Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 19, 2014, 3:24:48 PM1/19/14
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Our book clubbin' pickings are looking pretty slim.

Reply to this message and I'll fill up the list with your suggestions.

Reply with:

- That one blog post you've always wanted to read.
- That book you think you'd learn a lot from but haven't gotten around to reading on your lonesome.
- That cool screencast that changed your life.
- A presentation that changed the way you code.
- Some build-along idea (everybody, Todo web app in Elm (http://elm-lang.org/), stat!)

What we end up doing as a group depends on:

- What you suggest
- What you vote for

Your input on both of those matters. A lot.

Thanks,

Stephen Christopher

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Jan 19, 2014, 3:45:07 PM1/19/14
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I'd like to do more functional stuff. I'd be happy with a Ruby working example, or Erlang. I'd actually be happy working on Go also. I'd be happy to revisit the Elixir examples we were working through before. And I'm very interesting in architecture and structure of apps. 

If I was going to vote, I'd probably tend toward Go as a first pass. But I'd love to see what others want to do. The funnest part for me is active discussions. 

Step Christopher
Director of Products
Big Nerd Ranch, LLC



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Graham Lee

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:11:18 PM1/19/14
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Works for me. The book for me that fits the club's mandate (I.e. I won't read it without external provocation) in the FP realm is the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

I started Functional Programming for the O-O Programmer (https://leanpub.com/fp-oo) but would happily receive a kick to carry on with it.

Graham.

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Stephen Christopher

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:13:25 PM1/19/14
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I have fp-oo and wouldn't mind revisiting. 

We started SICP a year or two back. I'd really quite like to get into that again. I think I only got a chapter or two in last time, can't even remember. 

Step Christopher
Director of Products
Big Nerd Ranch, LLC



Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:18:10 PM1/19/14
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Funnily enough, Book Club's last incarnation worked through a large chunk of fp-oo many moons ago. I'm not sure how many people were around then vs. now, though; we might consider working through it anew.

IIRC I had really mixed feelings about FP-OO. It didn't mesh very well with the way I think about functional programming, which is very much rooted in the ML/Miranda/Haskell "leverage the type system for all its worth" approach. You don't see that as much in Clojure, which tends to be closer to Scheme-style FP, only moreso thanks to its handy immutable-by-default data structures.

I don't even think of SICP as FP so much as just basic CS. I only did small bits of it years ago, and it's definitely a trip. And the really good parts look later on, so that could be a lot of fun to do as a group.



2014/1/19 Graham Lee <gra...@bignerdranch.com>

Graham Lee

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:23:25 PM1/19/14
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In that case I'd welcome a suggestion for a type-system heavy FP reading, because that's an area I know nothing about. As I said on my blog, I would not know type system mathematics if it came up and quacked at me.

Graham.

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Graham Lee

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:33:13 PM1/19/14
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Does anyone have opinions on Learn You A Haskell for Great Good?

Sent from my iPhone

> On 19 Jan 2014, at 21:18, "Jeremy W. Sherman" <jer...@bignerdranch.com> wrote:
>
> Haskell

Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:39:53 PM1/19/14
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If people are interested in more basic CS, I think *Understanding Computation* (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025481.do) is more approachable and briefer than SICP. I've also had a copy for a while and not quite done much with it. ;)

For type-system heavy stuff, I think Real World OCaml recently came out. Real World Haskell is a bit dated at this point, though I find OCaml pretty ugly-looking versus Haskell.

Learn You a Haskell: I've had mixed results with the Learn You stuff. They seem a bit too ADD in presentation for me at times. But they are definitely approachable.

I've actually always wanted to do Hudak's *The Haskell School of Expression: Learning Functional Programming through Multimedia*. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521644089/ Rather than the usual boring stuff, it jumps you into GUIs and graphics and audio really early on. Making that sort of thing work right seems far more motivating than getting yet another reverse-Polish notation calculator to work right. ;)

Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming might be more up-to-date and also more textbook-y. (http://www.haskellcraft.com/craft3e/Home.html) It was recommended as a place to start by the Preface to Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell (http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929/pr01.html#_audience).

I picked up some Haskell from Davie's *Introduction to Functional Programming Systems Using Haskell* which is wonderfully brief but also pretty dense, and also (given its 1992 publication date) not very up to date.



2014/1/19 Graham Lee <gra...@bignerdranch.com>
In that case I'd welcome a suggestion for a type-system heavy FP reading, because that's an area I know nothing about. As I said on my blog, I would not know type system mathematics if it came up and quacked at me.

Stephen Christopher

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:40:40 PM1/19/14
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We did one of the Learn You A style books. I enjoyed it. I'm up for another. 

Turns out I'm easy to please. :D

Step Christopher
Director of Products
Big Nerd Ranch, LLC



Stephen Christopher

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:44:07 PM1/19/14
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I quite like the sound of the Hudak FP through multimedia book. 

All the negative reviews only encourage me. "Not a good 1st book." "Too much actual programming and not enough about FP." Sounds perfect to me! 

Step Christopher
Director of Products
Big Nerd Ranch, LLC



Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 19, 2014, 4:47:17 PM1/19/14
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It definitely sounds like we'd have plenty to talk about with the Hudak book. :)



2014/1/19 Stephen Christopher <schris...@bignerdranch.com>

Charlie Tanksley

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Jan 19, 2014, 5:01:35 PM1/19/14
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I support the "let's read some fp stuff" push, so don't take these two suggestions the wrong way. :) Just thought I'd share them now because I'd like to read them at some point:



Fodder for the future?

I didn't love FP-OO from the part I read. Implementing an OO system to understand functional programming made little sense to me.

Of all the suggestions so far (many of which are good!), I'd vote for SICP. Though maybe just pick a few chapters at first so we don't feel wed to it for months and months.

Charlie

Charlie Tanksley

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Jan 19, 2014, 5:13:36 PM1/19/14
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I think I take back my vote: the Hudak book looks pretty rad.

Stephen Christopher

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Jan 19, 2014, 5:15:41 PM1/19/14
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"If you want to suffer in a Computer Programming Languages class, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK." Ah HAHAHAHAHAHA. 

Seriously I like the look of it. Only problem is the mobile link gave me no way to get back to regular Amazon page. Bad Amazon! No cookie! 

I really like the other book: Machine Learning for Hackers. I'm interested in that problem set, and I've been wanting to use R more. 



Step Christopher
Director of Products
Big Nerd Ranch, LLC



Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 19, 2014, 5:21:02 PM1/19/14
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Ooh, I'd forgotten about Concepts, Techniques, and Models. That does indeed look interesting.

I think we might benefit from choosing to work from the same book for longer than 2 weeks, but we also should be ready to skip parts or ditch the book entirely if we're not enjoying it any more. I think I might have over-corrected in response to the death march experience of committing to an entire book by having us jump topics every 2 weeks. :)



2014/1/19 Charlie Tanksley <charlie...@bignerdranch.com>

Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 19, 2014, 5:27:43 PM1/19/14
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If you're interested in using R for machine learning, you might want to look into https://class.stanford.edu/courses/HumanitiesScience/StatLearning/Winter2014/about. They're using a (freely downloadable) textbook called "An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in R", which sounds like it would lead you into the territory you're interested in quite rapidly. :) I believe there's a group hereabouts that's getting together to watch the lectures and discuss it.



2014/1/19 Stephen Christopher <schris...@bignerdranch.com>

Jeremy W. Sherman

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Jan 21, 2014, 5:30:39 PM1/21/14
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I was all set to declare Hudak's Haskell School of Expression the winner, when I found out he had a second edition in progress (nearly done?). It focuses on teaching Haskell via generating music, rather than via multimedia.

HSoE was released back in 2000; HSoM's version 2.6 was posted just this month.

More details:

http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/?post_type=publication&p=112

This textbook (in progress) describes Euterpea, a computer music library developed in Haskell, that allows programming computer music applications both at the note level and the signal level.  The book also teaches functional programming in Haskell from scratch.  It is suitable for use in the classroom to teach functional programming, computer music principles, or both.

PDF: http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/HSoM2.pdf

Computer generated music coupled with Haskell sounds like fun to me.

So:

- Music?
- Multimedia?




2014/1/19 Jeremy W. Sherman <jer...@bignerdranch.com>

Stephen Christopher

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Jan 21, 2014, 5:41:24 PM1/21/14
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I am so, so in for music. You have no idea.

Step Christopher
Director of Products
Big Nerd Ranch, LLC



Graham Lee

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Jan 21, 2014, 6:03:46 PM1/21/14
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+1

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Charlie Tanksley

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Jan 21, 2014, 6:14:31 PM1/21/14
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Newer is probably better in this case, so I vote music.
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