Elements of ML Programming, Ml97 Edition

When tasked to quickly learn the basics of the ML programming language for class and be expected to program an Abstract Data Type, I was a little bit frantic. In the short time given to me to prep for said programing project, I raced around looking for sources that would improve my understanding of the language and one of the sources i found was this book that was also recommended by the professor. This book, Elements of ML Programming, has its reader approach ML from the vantage point of either someone who has never programmed but has some understanding of Programming theory or someone who has programmed before but never touched a Functional Programming Language. In that respect it excels at explaining the unique features of the ML language and how best to use and write in it.

This book covers the ML programming language. Unfortunately this language is rarely used these days as a functional programming language . This is a 97 edition which is again more than a decade old. If you are a person looking to learn a functional programming language i recommend learning the newer language such as Haskell. I used Haskell for my course recently.

Examples and exposition are overall great. Jokes are clever and the tone is light through the book. It reads much like the Perl book by Lary Wall. It hits topics a bit slower than SICP. The biggest problem with this book is it left me felling "Ok, I know the syntax/semantics, now what?" This is a common problem with intro to programming books, and I don't fault it too much for that. The biggest weakness of this book in my opinion is it didn't strongly teach a "style" that I can adopt into my own programs (but then, no FP programming book I've ever read does). It did great teaching functional programming, but as with most intro-to-fp books forgot that real programs don't fit in one file and are several thousand lines of code. Sean

I appreciate the consistency of exposition, especially when explaining recursion of execution and recursive datatypes using basis and induction cases. It's a book for those who are interested in the crossover between CS theory and mathematics, but only introductory calculus is necessary (and that's only in one section). If you come from a procedural programming background, as I did, this book is an excellent introduction to the techniques of functional programming. I would recommend reading this in conjunction with ML for the Working Programmer by Paulson. If you are looking for a gentler introduction to functional languages, like LISP and its sister Scheme, try The Little Schemer by Friedman and Felleisen.

Although this is an introductory book, I also recommend it to advanced programmers. Concise and well written, it is a joy to read. Programmers who have little knowledge of modern functional languages will benefit immensely from this book. It is a great recreational read.