Name: A little Java, a few patterns
ISBN: 9780262561150

A little Java, a few patterns

Matthias Felleisen and Daniel Friedman use a small subset of Java to introduce pattern-directed program design. With their usual clarity and flair, they gently guide readers through the fundamentals of object-oriented programming and pattern-based design. Readers new to programming, as well as those with some background, will enjoy their learning experience as they work their way through Felleisen and Friedman's lessons.

What Hacker News says

_glassMay 2026

there's actually a really good book that bridged it well for me when I was doing my bachelors, A Little Java, A Few Patterns. this is from the famous lisp books for groking FP.

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rramadassDec 2024

The book A Little Java, A Few Patterns by the same author and his colleague might answer your question.

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nextosSep 2024

I don't think there's a centralized community for the Little Series. I think this is unfortunate. With a community, some great titles like The Little MLer (typed FP) and A Little Java, a Few Patterns (OOP) would be much better known.

I found those two outstanding. I think A Little Java has been reprinted. But last time I checked, The Little MLer was bloody expensive. Standard ML, OCaml and F# need a lot more exposure. They are simple and practical. The Little MLer does a great job introducing the basics.

To close the circle, the Little Series is missing a book about concurrent and distributed paradigms à la Erlang. They already have functional programming, typed functional programming, declarative programming, dependent types, theorem proving, object-oriented programming and machine learning.

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_glassJun 2024

For me best described in, and also as a topic mentioned in the paper about the visitor pattern connection, "A Little Java, A Few Patterns". This book writes really impractical Java, but in such a Scheme way, that you really can understand the deep connections between functional and object-oriented programming.

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olifanteAug 2022

A little Java, a few patterns, by Matthias Felleisen. Delightful book.

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empthoughtDec 2014

They have exactly the same "power," they're just spelled differently. "func()" doesn't let you do anything that you can't do with "callable.call()". It's trivial to do everything that isn't syntactic sugar (for example, partial application, passing as arguments for abstraction) that you mention in Java, if a bit tedious (and often pointless, since the standard APIs generally weren't designed with that in mind.) _A Little Java, A Few Patterns_ came out in 1998; give it a read.

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