How can I use functional programming in the real world?

Brian R. Bondy picture Brian R. Bondy · Sep 27, 2008 · Viewed 19k times · Source

Functional languages are good because they avoid bugs by eliminating state, but also because they can be easily parallelized automatically for you, without you having to worry about the thread count.

As a Win32 developer though, can I use Haskell for some dlls of my application? And if I do, is there a real advantage that would be taken automatically for me? If so what gives me this advantage, the compiler?

Does F# parallelize functions you write across multiple cores and cpu's automatically for you? Would you ever see the thread count in task manager increase?

Basically my question is, how can I start using Haskell in a practical way, and will I really see some benefits if I do?

Answer

Apocalisp picture Apocalisp · Sep 27, 2008

It seems like the book Real World Haskell is just what you're looking for. You can read it free online:

http://book.realworldhaskell.org/