Press releases

Real World Haskell--New from O'Reilly: Code you can believe in

Press release: December 9, 2008

Real World Haskell Sebastopol, CA—Haskell may be unlike any language you've ever used before. Bryan O'Sullivan, John Goerzen, and Don Stewart, the authors of Real World Haskell (O'Reilly, US $49.99), call it a "deep language." They think that learning it is a hugely rewarding experience; they call it "code you can believe in."

What makes Haskell so remarkable? The Real World Haskell authors focus on three elements as they explain: "The first is novelty: we invite you to think about programming from a different and valuable perspective. The second is power: we'll show you how to create software that is short, fast, and safe. Lastly, we offer you a lot of enjoyment: the pleasure of applying beautiful programming techniques to solve real problems."

If all or part of that sounds good to you, you'll want to pick up a copy of Real World Haskell. It's an easy-to-use, fast-moving tutorial and introduction to functional programming with Haskell. You'll learn how to use Haskell in a variety of practical ways, from short scripts to large and demanding applications. You'll go through the basics of functional programming at a brisk pace, as you increase your understanding of Haskell in real-world issues like I/O, performance, dealing with data, concurrency, and more.

With this book, you will:

  • Understand the differences between procedural and functional programming
  • Learn the features of Haskell, and how to use it to develop useful programs
  • Interact with filesystems, databases, and network services
  • Write solid code with automated tests, code coverage, and error handling
  • Harness the power of multicore systems via concurrent and parallel programming

The book offers plenty of hands-on exercises, along with examples of Haskell programs that you can modify, compile, and run. Whether or not you've used a functional language before, if you want to understand why Haskell is coming into its own as a practical language in so many major organizations, Real World Haskell is the best place to start.

For a review copy or more information please email kathrynb@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.

John Goerzen has written several real-world Haskell libraries and applications, including the HDBC database interface, the ConfigFile configuration file interface, a podcast downloader, among others.

Bryan O'Sullivan was a member of the initial design team for the Jini network service architecture (subsequently open sourced as Apache River).

Donald Bruce Stewart is involved in a diverse range of Haskell projects, including practical libraries such as Data.ByteString, and applies Haskell to real-world applications, including compilers, linkers, text editors, network servers and systems software.

Additional Resources:
For more information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see the catalog page for Real World Haskell.

Real World Haskell
Bryan O'Sullivan , Donald Bruce Stewart , John Goerzen
ISBN: 9780596514983, 710 pages, Book Price: $49.99 USD, £35.50 GBP
PDF Price: $39.99 USD

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