[Haskell-cafe] Tutorial on Haskell

[R Hayes]

In my opinion, one of the things that makes Haskell difficult to  
learn is the value system.  I'm not referring to "pure" vs.  
"impure".  Instead, I am referring to the beliefs and principles held  
by the Haskell community that are not shared with most of the  
programming world.  Principles like "It is valuable to be able to  
reason about programs rigorously".  This is foreign to most  
developers.  When they get to the section of a Haskell book that  
starts talking about this, their eyes glaze over and they skip over  
to the "more practical stuff".  By the time they get to Monads  
they're ready to rip their eyes out because the book is "too  
theoretical" or "too academic".

One of the truly powerful things about Haskell is the short distance  
between theory and practicality.  The problem is how to demonstrate  
this convincingly.  The ability to prove a program's correctness is  
regularly trotted out for show in this arena (or at least the lighter- 
weight claim that programs that compile usually work).  I don't think  
that most developers (and certainly not the OSCON crowd) are ready to  
drink that kool-aid.  They *enjoy* debugging and are tired of the  
"static" vs. "dynamic" debate.  But the ability to reason about  
programs has borne fruit that I *do* think they will appreciate.   
Because many of them care about performance.

I don't need to tell the subscribers to this list that the shockingly  
good performance of code written using Data.ByteString.Lazy is a  
direct result of being able to reason about programs.  Obviously, the  
details of the fusion techniques are outside the scope of any  
introductory tutorial.  But I think it would be useful to quickly  
implement a "wc -l" equivalent and explain why it's faster than the  
simple C equivalent.  Nothing overly deep, just draw the line from  
"reasoning about programs" to "fusion" and on to "amazing  
performance"  (capping it off with the fact the the fusion  
optimization is in the *Library*, not baked in to the compiler).  At  
a minimum, it shows that being able to reason about programs  
rigorously can have a payoff in a currency that they value.

R Hayes
rfhayes<>@</>reillyhayes.com



On Apr 16, 2007, at 1:34 AM, 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
> _______________________________________________
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> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

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