ML for the Working Programmer

by Lawrence C. Paulson

Readers learn methods of functional programming--in particular, how to program in Standard ML, a functional language recently developed at Edinburgh University. Paulson shows how to use such concepts as lists, trees, higher-order functions and infinite data structures and includes a chapter on formal reasoning about functional programming. 50 line drawings. 6 7/8 x 9 3/4.

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Technical, Nonfiction, Computers, Artificial Intelligence

441 pages, Paperback

First published July 26, 1991

Reviews

[Phil Eaton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really sure who "working programmer" refers to in the book. It delves too quickly into formal proofs and implementation of a lambda calculus-based language. It's a disappointment to think that this might influence one's perception of what is possible with Standard ML... namely everything/anything.

[David MacIver · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book I learned to program from, more or less.

I can't say that what I was doing at the time was much in the way of programming - it was mostly copying stuff out of a text editor into the Moscow ML REPL (the ML REPLs are amazing. Nothing else comes close to being as good, except maybe Jupyter notebooks which are a very different ball game)

However I don't really write any ML variants any more, and even if I did this probably isn't the book I would use now that I already know how. If you're starting out though with this style of programming though, it's a good and easy read and I can recommend it.

[Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid introduction to Standard ML with a lot of short example code. Bit longer and less succinct than Ullman's book. I found the examples quite useful for getting a sense of how to use things like the module features.

[Duncan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really disliked this book. It was an obtuse introduction to functional programming, and there's much better out there. And if you're going to insist on using a language which is really just a wrapper for an elaborate proof planner, then at least go with Haskell.