[Haskell-cafe] Very freaky

[Creighton Hogg]

On 7/10/07, Jim Burton <jim at sdf-eu.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> Andrew Coppin wrote:
> >
> >
> > On the one hand, it feels exciting to be around a programming language
> > where there are deep theoretical discoveries and new design territories
> > to be explored. (Compared to Haskell, the whole C / C++ / Java /
> > JavaScript / Delphi / VisualBasic / Perl / Python thing seems so
> boring.)
> >
> > On the other hand... WHAT THE HECK DOES ALL THAT TEXT *MEAN*?! >_<
> >
> >
> I agree, it's exciting to use Haskell because of its theoretical
> underpinning and the sense of it as a lab for PL ideas. The cost of taking
> part in that (even as an observer) is the background knowledge and common
> vocabulary you need in order to make sense of a lot of the papers that you
> may get referred to, presuming you start asking the kind of questions that
> elicit answers like that. I don't think the amount of background knowledge
> required is actually that big but if it's missing you will feel like
> you're
> going one step forwards and two steps back.
>
> The "Getting Started" thread on Lambda the Ultimate is good  - maybe we
> need
> a wikipage like that but of links to sources of the type theoretical
> background to Haskell (is there one already? I see "Research Papers",
> which
> obviously has a different purpose).
>
> I don't know where the best place to start would be but, as I said in
> another thread Andrew, TAPL is great. Re. Curry-Howard, have a look Simon
> Thompson's book (online for free)
> http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/sjt/TTFP/  . Not quick reads (by any
> means!), but depending on your learning style, better value than asking ad
> hoc questions and joining the dots via blog posts/wiki pages etc.


I'd like throw in another vote for TAPL.  I've been reading it lately and it
honestly makes type theory feel fairly simple and natural.  I think Pierce's
writing is very clear, but occasionally the exercises make the problem sound
harder than it is and it gets a little confusing.  A friend of mine has the
same problem with his category theory book.
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