Review of "Algorithm Design with Haskell" by Richard Bird and Jeremy Gibbons, Cambridge University Press, 2020

Abstract

Algorithms in their purely functional form. Books on algorithms are plenty. Many present classical algorithms as entities carved in stone, conceived decades ago, and typeset in framed pseudo-code boxes. Not so in the present book. Bird and Gibbons treat any algorithm as a subject of calculation, to be derived systemically and elegantly starting from an (almost) blank sheet that initially holds nothing but a functional specification. In fact, several of these calculations start out with incantations like solutions= filter good · candidates or algorithm= aggregate · test · generate