Sunday, December 5, 2010

The Haskell Road . . .

Time for another quick book report.  The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths, and Programming advertises itself as a from-the-bootstraps guide to, well, logic, math, and programming.  I've finished the first 4 chapters, a little more than a third of the book.  What do I think so far?

It's a very good guide to the foundations of mathematics.  Though I have a math degree, this is something that never really clicked for me before.  The ad copy states the only knowledge the book presumes is secondary school mathematics. I don't have that perspective, but I think the book does a good job of explaining the foundations of mathematics without assuming any more knowledge than that.  I'm not so sure it's as successful on the programming side -- I think there are several places where a reader with no programming experience would be quite confused about the example programs.

It seems to me that the book's real target audience is programmers who want to learn some Haskell and learn the fundamentals of logic and math and how to use formal methods in Haskell.  So far, it accomplishes those goals fabulously.

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