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by tuukkah 2958 days ago
> We have all the features we need to mimic a language like Scala or Haskell with the help of a tiny library or two.

Seems misleading at best, as you mimic only some parts of functional programming. For example, for-loops are not used but neither are recursion and tail calls mentioned.

> [T]yped functional languages will, without a doubt, be the best place to code in the style presented by this book. JavaScript will be our means of learning a paradigm, where you apply it is up to you.

Surprising how they teach the typed functional programming paradigm in a language which does not support you in it. Going from JavaScript to Haskell, wouldn't PureScript be a better stepping stone than this? Consider tail call elimination or all the support that type checking gives you to get the type nestings right, especially when you are a beginner and may have issues even with String being [Char] (unlike JavaScript) let alone Monads etc.

(EDIT: In case you didn't check the contents of the book: Yes, this is a book that teaches Monads, type classes, pointfree style, Hindley-Milner(!) etc., not a form of FP that would be natural in JS.)
2 comments
brianberns 2958 days ago
It seems like a good book, but I think this is fair criticism. It skips some of the basic FP concepts that you mentioned, and is surprisingly heavy on more advanced topics (e.g. category theory, which I personally enjoy).

Most of the book isn't really a beginner's guide. A more accurate title might be "JavaScript for Haskell Programmers".

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weatherlight 2958 days ago
Most people are familiar with JS, not a lot of people have experience with Haskell or OCaml, or F# (Otherwise, they wouldn't really find any of this useful.)

And to the point... how would one go about taking "Imperative Haskell" Code and making it more functional... you can't. Either you write Haskell functionally or whatever you wrote will refuse to compile. I love this book and the Egghead.io videos that followed. I love this guide and the egghead.io videos. That content made me curious about Haskell and Tacit Programming.

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