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copied!<p>I recommend <a href="http://haskell.org" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Haskell</a>. Please check out this other SO question: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/getting-started-with-haskell">Getting Started with Haskell</a>.</p> <p>Reasons in favor of Haskell:</p> <ul> <li>From a personal perspective first: I spent a considerable amount of my early programming years thinking about designing my own programming language. (For example, I highly recommend the textbook <a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0126339511" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="2nd edition on Amazon">Programming Language Pragmatics</a>.) When I first encountered Haskell, I realized that it incorporated many of the ideas I had, plus many more, and all in ways far better than I could have done myself.</li> <li>It's a very pure implementation of functional ideals: lazy (non-strict) and (polymorphically) statically typed. No side effects!</li> <li>Its type system might change your view of type systems. (Hindley-Milner type inference is amazing.)</li> <li>Its alternative view of object-oriented programming and polymorphism is great.</li> </ul> <p>Lisp is also a good choice. Reasons in favor of a Lisp variant:</p> <ul> <li>Historically the first functional programming language (or the first huge one).</li> <li>The worldview "everything is a list" is very minimalist, simple, and beautiful.</li> </ul> <p>If you do choose a Lisp variant, I recommend <a href="http://www.schemers.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Scheme</a>.</p> <p>I have not used OCaml or Ruby, but some of my friends swear by them, though one could argue how functional they are. On the other hand, their "multi-paradigm" nature makes them very convenient in practice.</p> <p>To conclude, I suggest you choose a language following Alan Perlis's advice: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." Lisp and Haskell both changed my world. I hope that no matter what language you choose, it changes your world.</p>

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