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What are some good references, not very dense, to understand the underlying math and computability aspects of the notion of "functional programming"? I'd like to have something that talks about it from a math point of view and if/when I learn a functional programming language I can have the necessary "aha" moments when seeing the ideas being implemented.

I've read SICP, but that's Scheme specific and is a dense read. I don't really "get" functional programming after reading it and was looking for something more sublime and closer to the underlying math and computability points of views.

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  • $\begingroup$ Try amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0954300696 $\endgroup$ – Chad Brewbaker Mar 22 '14 at 2:04
  • $\begingroup$ Don't mind trying that. In fact, everything "functional/lambda" I stumble on to Haskell references $\endgroup$ – PhD Mar 22 '14 at 3:42
  • $\begingroup$ I didn't think it was bad for learning the syntax. The "ah ha" moments are realizing you can do away with a lot of control structure boiler plate needed in C, that semigroups/monoids are everywhere youtube.com/watch?v=cMY1KVrJk0w , and that you can compose IO in an associative manner like Unix pipes (IO monads). Also, check out Kmett's lens library github.com/ekmett/lens which is great for querying nested lists in a way you would probably never do in C. $\endgroup$ – Chad Brewbaker Mar 22 '14 at 13:15

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