The little MLer
by Matthias Felleisen · first published 1998
55% recommend45% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Teaches thinking in types through short exercises and commentary, with examples in Caml and Standard ML. Suits programmers learning typed functional programming, such as OCaml or Haskell newcomers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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> In my experience, learning OCaml is a good way to become accustomed to the type system Haskell uses I'd agree with this. In addition I'd recommend "The Little MLer" as a great book on how to think in terms of types. edit. didn't read further down. Seems as if it is already mentioned:)
on “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” ↗…rather relatively thin books of exercises and commentary, all designed to introduce you to several deep ideas. (Also, some people are really turned off by the style or find the writing overly cute.) The Little MLer is excellent for learning how to think in types (as in OCaml and Haskell), btw. Highly recommended.
on “SICP Prequel Textbook” ↗…evaluation at a micro-level, until the semantics feel totally clear. This is especially helpful since Scheme and Prolog are both very different from the typical imperative/OO languages people know. FWIW, The Little MLer is written in the same style as TLS, and is a good, lightweight introduction to ML's type system / static typing.
on “Ask HN: Programming books that are more like math books?” ↗There _is_ a Little MLer (with examples in Caml and Standard ML), which teaches type-based programming very well, and would be worth reading for anyone setting out to learn Haskell, I imagine (I respect Haskell's purity, but…
on “What do you want to see in Learn C The Hard Way?” ↗Some other texts w/SML: The Little MLer: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTML/ which you can read with the revised Programming in SML http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/isml/book.pdf Discrete Math & Functional Programming: https://cs.wheaton.edu/~tvandrun/dmfp/…
on “Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?” ↗I don't think there's a centralized community for the Little Series. I think this is unfortunate. With a community, some great titles like The Little MLer (typed FP) and A Little Java, a Few Patterns (OOP) would be much better known. I found those two outstanding. I think A Little Java has been reprinted. But last time I checked, The Little MLer was bloody…
on “The Little Typer (2018)” ↗…programming background, I'd study HtDP (https://htdp.org) as an interlude, after The Little Schemer. Pace is gentle, and explanations about program design are long and very lucid. After those two, I'd try The Little MLer. The other books are quite advanced, better to build solid foundations first.
on “The Little Typer (2018)” ↗The Little Series, famous for The Little Schemer book, published The Little MLer in 1998. It's probably their lesser known volume, but IMHO it makes a terrific job at teaching the ML family and its features.
on “Four Lectures on Standard ML (1989) [pdf]” ↗…(https://github.com/dotnet/interactive) are a great way to get started. You just need to install the .NET 6 SDK (which gets you F#) and then install the .NET Interactive Notebook extension in VS Code. That's it. There is also the book The Little MLer which gets people comfortable with discriminated unions (sum types), and I used the book and ported the examples to F#. I need to go back and finish that annotation project (https://github.com/bmitc/the-little-fsharper).…
on “OCaml at First Glance” ↗The same people have also written The Little MLer (http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-MLer-Matthias-Felleisen/dp/...).
on “My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part One” ↗Thanks, that's good to hear. I'm working through the Little MLer right now. Good intro, but I'd be interested recommendations for other good books on ML.
on “The 3 Programming Languages you need to Know” ↗…really annoying. L: Congratulations. Now go make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! [ ] This space reserved for JELLY STAINS! ... I found the Little Schemer and especially the Little MLer to be helpful for learning their respective modes of thought, but once I finished them, they were gone.
on “Why aren't more books written like this?” ↗…in Ruby by Sandi Metz. I started this one after reading 99 Bottles of OOP. Longer term project is to read through The Little Schemer and the other books in that series like The Reasoned Schemer, The Little MLer, etc.
on “Ask HN: What technical books are you reading?” ↗…Clojure * Eiffel the Language * Programming Erlang * Forth (Salman et al.) * Thinking Forth * Introduction to Fortran * The Little Schemer * The Seasoned Schemer * The Reasoned Schemer * The Little MLer * Programming in Lua * Lucid, the Dataflow Programming Language * Functional Programming in Scala * Clause and Eiffel * Scatchpad * Smalltalk-80, The Interactive Programming Environment * Smalltalk-80,…
on “Bret Victor's Bookshelf (2015)” ↗…Guess it depends on perspective. The Seasoned Schemer - More on Scheme. The Reasoned Schemer - Minikanren in Scheme The Little Prover - Proofs about programs The Little Typer - Dependent types The Little MLer - The ML language, not machine learning. A Little Java - Java I have the first 5 books, but never got around to finishing Little Prover or Typer (got married and moved that year, probably not the best…
on “The Little Learner: A Straight Line to Deep Learning” ↗