[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Another First course in Haskell

[Neil Mitchell]

> That book is about teaching Haskell, not advertising it. If I wanted
> to advertise how cool Haskell was, I probably wouldn't dwell on lists.
> But to learn Haskell, I spent the first few years doing either list
> processing or very simple algebraic data types, and I think it made me
> a better programmer as a result.
>
> If you want to program Haskell, get the basics sorted. Once you have
> sorted the basics of functional programming, you can move on to the
> Haskell specific bits. The course I learnt from at York left out
> things such as modules, type classes (beyond slight Eq/Ord
> signatures), monads, IO (other than interact) and anything not in
> Haskell 98. What it did cover very well was functional programming and
> functional reasoning.

Of course, after teaching these bits, say towards the end of a course
or in a Real World Haskell book, the extra Haskell bits should
definately be covered! They are what makes a Haskell programmer, but
not what makes a functional programmer.

Thanks

Neil