any recommendation for tutorials on functional programming

[Joe Armstrong (AL/EAB)]

One point which people haven't mentioned is that it is not a good idea
to
point beginners, who wish to learn Erlang to texts that tell you how to
learn *other* FPLs.

If you are a beginner and want to learn X - find a beginners X text.

Once you know X it will be slightly easier to learn Y (if both  X and Y
are in the same family of FPLs)

Once you know X AND Y then it will be a tiny bit easier to learn Z etc.

FPLs fall into families, lazy, eager, strongly typed, dynamically typed
etc.

Knowing a language in one family will not help you with a language in
the other schools if you are a beginner.

Once you know Erlang well THEN you can try O'CAML (or vice versa)

Yariv Sadan said:

  > I like the OCaml tutorial. It's not exactly like Erlang, but it has
similar concepts.

To me this is like telling somebody who is interested in imperative
languages
(especially Perl) to read a book on python - yes they have similar
concepts - but you
will only be able to see the similarities when you got pretty good at
both languages.

The golden rule of teaching things is "only confuse people with one
thing at a time" 

Learning Erlang is pretty easy - but not by reading an O'Caml book - the
concepts are
similar - but this is not blindingly obvious to a beginner.

Cheers

/Joes

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED 
> [mailto:owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED] On Behalf Of Roberto Saccon
> Sent: den 22 juni 2006 15:35
> To: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: Re: any recommendation for tutorials on functional 
> programming
> 
> Thanks very much for that link, that document now is my 
> personal favourite for an Erlang tutorial, it includes all 
> aspects such as functional programming but also many examples 
> and real world case studies and it is easy readable.
> 
> And within minutes that document cleared up several 
> missunderstandings, questions and doubts I head.
> 
> thanks again
> 
> On 6/22/06, Stefan Axelsson L (LN/EAB) 
> <stefan.l.axelsson@REDACTED> wrote:
> > I wrote:
> > >When it comes Erlang the problem is the concurrent stuff, that is
> > unique to Erlang (well not entirely, but you
> > >get my drift) and not well covered from an introductory 
> perspective.
> > There are bits and pieces here and there
> > >(e.g. on Joe Armstrong's homepage) but no comprehensive collection 
> > >that
> > I know of.
> >
> > I actually forgot one source. Joe Armstrong's PhD thesis is 
> a readable 
> > introduction to these parts of Erlang (i.e. it covers much of the 
> > ground and doesn't get bogged down in just a few details here and 
> > there, like many other PhD theses has a tendency to.) Get it at:
> > http://www.sics.se/~joe/thesis/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf
> >
> > Stefan,
> > --
> > Stefan Axelsson PhD  (ERVSTAX)  PDU PCN Syst. Mgmt.  tel: 031-747
> > 3963(mobile/work)
> >
> 
> 
> --
> Roberto Saccon
>