From: Michal Suchanek Date: 2011-04-04T21:56:32+09:00 Subject: Re: functional paradigm taking over On 4 April 2011 14:41, Josh Cheek wrote: > On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 4:28 AM, Stu wrote: > >> is this a good book to read to grok functional programming, >> http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html >> >> I have done some lisp but interested in gaining the skillset with ruby, >> >> any nice thick comp sci books for recommendation? >> >> > I haven't gone through it yet, but I have a PDF version I can upload if you > don't like the html format of that one. It should be understood, though, > that Ruby's functional support isn't the same as that of the purely > functional languages. That isn't to suggest you won't get insights from that > book, I know a lot of relevant people who have recommended it (ie Uncle Bob, > and Rick DeNetale). > It is not HTML vs PDF, it is the problems inherent in SICP which are even detailed in some paper. Basically SICP expects that you take and understand some mildly advanced math courses before you take the course SICP was written for. There are chapters with quite obscure examples which could be instead constructed of problems easier to understand and more accessible to the general public. Some also argue that the book suffers from one awesome feature of LISP - it does not differentiate between data and code. While the feature is interesting and useful it may make the coding more confusing for newcomers and make some of the examples needlessly difficult and hard to understand due to quoting. Thanks Michal