Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!
by Miran Lipovača · first published 2011
63% recommend25% neutral12% critical
Why HN recommends it
Light-hearted, engaging Haskell tutorial that builds from functors up to monads so they finally make sense; free online and suited to beginners and experienced programmers new to functional programming.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…thing, here are some others in a similar humorous style for other languages. 1. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny programming book -- from 1978). 2. Lipovača, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good. 3. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the Haskell book). 4. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket. Oddly, nobody's done a "Commonwealth…
on “Land of Lisp (2010)” ↗> Is Haskell the semantically sane language you prefer? One of them. > The best Haskell book I can find is next for me as soon as I finish SICP, any suggestions? I liked Learn You a Haskell for Great Good, but that is maybe just because I am a childish person. :-)
on “Do I Really Need a Programming Language?” ↗I hope he publishes a print version of the finished book, like Miran Lipovača did with Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! If someone releases a free book that has immense value to me, I'm more than willing to support them by buying a wonderful print version. There's something wonderful about having the ergonomics of a…
on “Reverse Engineering for Beginners” ↗I second the Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby and Learn You a Haskell For Great Good. However, I think SICP is a bit ambitious. Here is an old HN discussion on teaching programming: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428095 In addition, I recommend _why's Hackety Hack based on Ruby.…
on “Ask HN: Online Resources for Beginner Hackers?” ↗While we're at it, let me throw out a shoutout for Learn You a Haskell For Great Good. One of the best programming books I've read, Miran is excellent at explaining programming concepts.
on “Why I prefer scheme to Haskell” ↗…Games People Play - Classic by Eric Berne. Must read psychology. Short, and you will get so much out of it. Don't Sweat the Small Stuff - Must read psychology. Short, and you will get so much out of it. Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! - Will re-read soon to get to the next level.
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012” ↗>For christmas I bought myself a copy of Learn You A Haskell For Great Good by Miran Lipovača. Apart from being a great Haskell learning resource, it’s one of the best programming books I have ever read. I second that. Miran is a superb technical writer. He also annotates…
on “Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala” ↗Life: The Disappearance of the Universe Programming: Effective Java - straight forward pragmatism Learn You a Haskell for Great Good - took me down the rabbit hole of Haskell, which is just a natural mindbender
on “Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?” ↗Learn you a Haskell for Great Good. Not required reading but entertaining and only somewhat practical unless you happen to write Haskell for a living, in which case yeah - too bad.
on “Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?” ↗I would also include The Little Schemer and Learn You a Haskell For Great Good in the “further reading/references” section. They also explain recursion well.
on “How not to teach recursion (2021)” ↗…read it, when I want to make a specific point. E.g. I asked a dev who wrote some very stateful js (lots of methods without a return value would would manipulate global variables in weird ways) to read Learn You a Haskell for Great Good to get him to think about side-effects and how to avoid them when possible. - I haven’t done this yet, but I thought about a team code advent where everyone would solve the same problem in the same language,…
on “Ask HN: How do you help your team “level up”?” ↗"Learn you a Haskell for Great Good" by Miran Lipovača.
on “Was there any book that converted you from spaghetti coder to a good programmer?” ↗Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! A Beginner's Guide Book by Miran Lipovača
on “Ask HN: Which is the best programming book you have ever read?” ↗Perhaps this isn't the best place: I eventually want to move on beyond ruby and java and try out a functional language. Clojure, Scala and Haskell all seem interesting. Haskell because it's pure functional. Scala and Clojure because they're functional and on the JVM, and out of the two, Clojure. So it's between clojure and haskell in my mind. Haskell has a great tutorial book/website (http://lea
on “Clojure 1.5” ↗…followed it. I know it absolutely changed the content that was coming out even if it was just part of the zeitgeist. Are there any other canonical example of the why style? A few that come to mind: • Learn You A Haskell for Great Good • Land o Lisp • Clojure Brave and True I don't find myself with the time to luxuriate in this type of writing much any more and typically gravitate towards more terse material. However, I credit this…
on “_why's Estate” ↗