[Haskell-cafe] Tutorial on Haskell

[Derek Elkins]

Hans van Thiel wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 09:34 +0100, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
>> Friends
>>
>> I have agreed to give a 3-hr tutorial on Haskell at the Open Source Convention 2007
>>         http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2007/
>>
>> I'm quite excited about this: it is a great opportunity to expose Haskell to a bunch of smart folk, many of whom won't know much about Haskell.  My guess is that they'll be Linux/Perl/Ruby types, and they'll be practitioners rather than pointy-headed academics.
>>
>> One possibility is to do a tutorial along the lines of "here's how to reverse a list", "here's what a type is" etc; you know the kind of thing.  But instead, I'd prefer to show them programs that they might consider *useful* rather than cute, and introduce the language along the way, as it were.
>>
>> So this message is to ask you for your advice.  Many of you are exactly the kind of folk that come to OSCON --- except that you know Haskell.   So help me out:
>>
>>         Suggest concrete examples of programs that are
>>                 * small
>>                 * useful
>>                 * demonstrate Haskell's power
>>                 * preferably something that might be a bit
>>                         tricky in another language
>>
>> For example, a possible unifying theme would be this:
>>         http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Simple_unix_tools
>>
  >> Another might be Don's cpu-scaling example
>>         http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/03/10
>>
>> But there must be lots of others.  For example, there are lots in the blog entries that Don collects for the Haskell Weekly Newsletter.  But I'd like to use you as a filter: tell me your favourites, the examples you find compelling.  (It doesn't have to be *your* program... a URL to a great blog entry is just fine.)  Of course I'll give credit to the author.
>>
>> Remember, the goal is _not_ "explain monads".  It's "Haskell is a great way to Get The Job Done".
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Simon

> I'm really enthusiastic about parsec. Even though the principles are
[cut]
> 4) there is a very helpful and knowledgeable community.

It is significant that Parsec has been and continues to be a lure of Haskell.

Also, the community, in my opinion, is one of the greatest boons of the 
language, but I'm not sure how to convey that.

This blog article 
(http://blog.moertel.com/articles/2006/10/18/a-type-based-solution-to-the-strings-problem) 
was/is fairly popular and demonstrates many aspects of Haskell and the way 
Haskellers think.

Some of the recent ByteString stuff that does interesting things faster and much 
cleaner than C may also be a good example.