[Haskell-cafe] Re: how would Albus Dumbledore sell Haskell

[Greg Meredith]

Simon,

Regarding Justin Bailey's idea of a calculator -- here's a twist. There is
some sample Haskell code of Conway's account of numbers as games floating
around the internet (http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/pgh/conway.html,
http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/pgh/Conway.lhs). i can't vouch for the code as
i have not read it in anger. However, i've always thought it would be fun to
do the standard calculator example, but with Conway games on the back end
for doing the arithemetic.

Some of the attractions:

   - you could have another set of buttons for displaying the games
   respresentation of the numbers
   - you could really emphasize the polymorphism of the basic operations
   - you could emphasize the use of laziness for calculations involving
   infinitary entities
   - you could explain Conway games (which are an intellectual treat for
   those who never seen them and just get better and better the more you return
   to them)

Best wishes,

--greg

-- 
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
505 N 72nd St
Seattle, WA 98103

+1 206.650.3740

http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com
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