ML for the Working Programmer

by Lawrence C. Paulson

This book teaches the methods of functional programming--in particular, how to program in Standard ML, a functional language recently developed at Edinburgh University. The author 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. This is meant to be a practical book; the author avoids dogma, emphasizes efficiency, and provides many useful and interesting programs. These include fast sorting functions and efficient function implementations of arrays, queues, and priority queues. Examples also include a ^D*l-calculus reducer and theorem prover. Most features of ML (including modules and imperative programming) are covered in depth and the book can be used without an ML reference manual. The reader is assumed to have some experience in programming in conventional languages such as C or Pascal. For such individuals, be they students, graduates or researchers, this will be a convincing introduction to functional programming.

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

439 pages, Hardcover

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.