Haskell Programming

by joelgrus • 11 years ago

70 22 11 years ago

akurilin• 11 years ago

Copypasta from the first time this was posted (with the wrong URL):

Pretty thrilled about this book.

There are rather few recent Haskell texts with beginners in mind, and Chris of the https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell fame is probably one of the most qualified people out there to teach the subject. At Front Row we actually use learnhaskell pretty heavily with our new developers. For us it's the central hub for devs to start learning the language.

Anything that helps people get started and advance through the skillset is a huge boon to the community.

saosebastiao• 11 years ago

He may possibly be a qualified teacher of Haskell, but he's a terrible ambassador for it. A cursory glance through his post history shows him time after time attacking people who dare write about something they like about other languages...all with his smug air of superiority. Want to write a post about asynchronous patterns in your favorite language? He'll be right there dismissing everything you say with some smug comment about how Haskell had it first. I've seen his handle pop up everywhere from Rust threads about Traits to JavaScript threads about async/await. That is exactly the type of personality I found prominent when I decided to learn Haskell, and it is a huge contributing reason to why I won't go back. There are far better ways to evangelize your language than to troll and abuse fans of other languages.

flippant• 11 years ago

I cannot confirm nor deny this because I don't know anything about the author's personality.

As a beginner, I would recommend anyone else who is stuck while learning Haskell to ask in #haskell on Freenode. The people in there are very helpful.

hyperpape2• 11 years ago

I have the same impression, which slightly tempers my curiousity about this book, but it sounds a bit like he thinks that was a mistake: https://twitter.com/bitemyapp/status/602716056285679616.

Also, not precisely the same question, but related and encouraging: https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell/blob/master/coc.md.

ddellacosta• 11 years ago

This twitter exchange I had with him and the infamous Tony Morris was all I needed to know I don't want or need to have anything to do with either of them--and furthermore spending time learning from either of them may actually hurt me, if it encourages me to starting thinking the same way they do:

https://twitter.com/dubitable/status/469359776074563584

I love Haskell and spend a lot of time learning it, but I've gotten by just fine without his resources. The fact is that a lot of far more tolerant and far less self-aggrandizing folks have been patiently teaching Haskell for a long time. Check out #haskell (or #nothaskell, lots of nice folks there too) and ask for help if you need it.

voidz3• 11 years ago

Luckily we're not all so quick to judge others. Or maybe I am: In my opinion it is posts like yours that turn/have turned Hacker News into Douchebag Central.

cgag• 11 years ago

Chris (coolsunglasses) has a bad rep from being pretty harsh on in the past, but I want to say that my interactions have been very positive. When I posted my first project[1] on the Haskell reddit, he reached out to me via email and discussed ways to improve the code, which was one of the nicest things anyone's done for me, at least related to software.

I think he's toned things down publicly, though I get where a lot of it comes from. It is frustrating to see people excited about things like async patterns in say node, when Haskell's are so nice but largely ignored.

[1]plug: https://github.com/cgag/selecth

voidz3• 11 years ago

I would really like to purchase this book - Haskell is fantastic - but I'm afraid it's too expensive for me. But also, when I study, I want a real book not an ebook. So I will have to skip this one, sadly enough. If it comes in print I might reconsider.

coolsunglasses6• 11 years ago

By all means wait then! The ebook-only is because this is early access, we're looking for people that want to send us feedback and help us with the book without committing to a more laborious review process. It might also be worth waiting in your case because we haven't released the majority of the content yet. The early access should make sense for a wider audience when about ~50% of the book is part of the current release.

We're determined to get a print run but we won't start preparing for print until the book is done in January. For now we've been testing samples from printers and figuring out costs. One problem is that a lot of places charge a lot for shipping internationally so we might need separate printers for US and EU. Another problem is the book's length is going to make things expensive, so it'll have to be a black & white book, with the color syntax highlighting being ebook only. The cost estimates I've been getting for a color print have been $100++ per unit.

We talk about the price a bit in the FAQ at: http://haskellbook.com/faq.html

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

voidz3• 11 years ago

Thank you for answering. :-)

rattray2• 11 years ago

Perhaps this is the wrong way to phrase this question... but what's wrong with http://learnyouahaskell.com ? Personally I found it very approachable, but then I've never tried another way of learning Haskell. Just curious to hear what the common critiques of it are.

coolsunglasses6• 11 years ago

Given how widely known LYAH is, it's totally a reasonable question to ask.

I've collated most of my thoughts on different Haskell learning resources and where the challenges are for learners in this post: http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-12-31-functional-education.h...

Please let me know if you have further questions.

rattray2• 11 years ago

Wow, great - thanks! Sure wish I had taken cis194 while I was at Penn, people always talked about how great the course was but I didn't realize it was best-course-in-the-world good. (I wasn't a CIS student and didn't think I would be programming professionally upon graduation).

truncate• 11 years ago

Any recommendation to get started with Haskell for a person who is pretty comfortable with functional programming (Racket, OCaml)?

coolsunglasses6• 11 years ago

Guide as usual, https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell#how-should-i-learn... (so, cis194 -> NICTA Course)

but you can skip the first four weeks. You can try skipping more, but I suspect some backtracking will be required.

Also be aware that the rules are different for recursion when non-strictness is involved. It doesn't necessarily matter if functions are tail recursive or not.

Haskell Programming

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