Resources for learning Monads, Functors, Monoids, Arrows etc

Question

Can you people please suggest some good books / weblinks from where I can get to learn about above mentioned concepts?

(Please note that I am a Java programmer and have NO prior experience with functional programming. I have been studying Scala since last one month and would appreciate the resources that try to teach the above mentioned concepts with Scala. (or even Java, if posible))

Answer 1

I always use wikipedia (even for programming terminologies)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(functional_programming)

I used this book sometime ago http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Programming-Practice-Bruce-Maclennan/dp/0201137445

Answer 2

I'd recommend you to go here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/

and watch all videos on Functional Programming Fundamentals. They are really helpful.

Answer 3

It has been a little while since I read them, but I remember this group of posts being very helpful and easy to follow:

http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2007/09/monads-are-elephants-part-1.html

http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2007/10/monads-are-elephants-part-2.html

http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2007/10/monads-are-elephants-part-3.html

http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2007/11/monads-are-elephants-part-4.html

Answer 4

Scala is a relatively new language, and not all these concepts are well illustrated in it. There are still relatively few resources on these topics for Scala.

However, if you search for these terms with "haskell" appended, and you'll find many good tutorials (most of the programmatic uses of these concepts appear in Haskell).

• Monads: http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/monads.html
• Arrows: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Understanding_arrows
• Functors: http://learnyouahaskell.com/functors-applicative-functors-and-monoids
• Monoids: http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/01/haskell-monoids-and-their-uses.html