[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANN: "Real World Haskell", now shipping

[Andrew Coppin]

Ahn, Ki Yung wrote:
> Andrew Coppin 쓴 글:
>> Then again, one day I sat down and tried to draw a diagram of the 
>> essential concepts, techniques and syntax of Haskell and how they're 
>> related... The result looked like alphabet soup! It's not clear how 
>> you start to explain anything without immediately needing to explain 
>> 20 other things you just used to explain the first thing. (Somebody 
>> commented "recursive tutorials for a recursive language". It was 
>> meant as an insult, but I actually kinda like it...) Given that 
>> that's the case, I'm not really sure that I could do any better than 
>> the Three Kings, so maybe I should just shuffle off and keep my 
>> comments to myself. :-/
>
> If one needs introductory Haskell programming tutorial explaining 
> about the language concepts from first principles, then one should 
> read a textbook written for that purpose such as "Programming in 
> Haskell".
>
> "Real World Haskell" is a collection of practical tips and know-hows 
> to get things done at work rather than a step-by-step Haskell 
> tutorial. And I believe that many other O'Reilly books are like that.

Quoting the introduction:

"What will you need to know before reading this book? We expect that you 
already know how to program, but if you've never used a functional 
language, that's fine."

Seems like it's intended to be useful to people who don't know any 
Haskell at all. And indeed, the subject matter of the opening chapters 
strongly reinforces this impression. Certainly this doesn't look like a 
book aimed at Haskell experts who are just looking for tips on how to 
solve "real world" problems. (Although no doubt the authors intended it 
for their benefit as well.)

Unfortunately, the organisation isn't the clearest. But then, given that 
I've yet to come up with anything better myself, we should probably 
leave it at that...