title: Functional programming and equation solvers
body: <p>Just as a personal experiment, in order to try to learn better about programming and formal language theory and the like, I'm trying to write a language that basically takes in a bunch of equations and solves for unknowns more or less automatically or heuristically. I'm trying to do this by writing an interpreter in C.</p>
  
  <p>All that's not super-relevant, though... more importantly, I've discovered functional programming in the last few days (by which I mean I read Wikipedia's entry for it and a brief Haskell tutorial) and it seems to deal with very similar things to what I want to do.</p>
  
  <p>I guess what I'm wondering is, are there any other languages I should look into, or any non-functional languages that have libraries or programs that try to do similar things, such that I might gain a better understanding of what I'm setting out to do?</p>
  
  <p>Also, are there any good references out there for writing interpreters, etc.?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>
  
  <p>P.S. Oh, and I'm aware I could and should use Google. I am, on the side. More than anything I'm looking for a collective of "second opinions" for what's good, and what people have used before. Also, I'm trying to get to know the community a little better, since I'm new here. Thanks for your patience :-)</p>