[Haskell-cafe] Interesting new user perspective

[Jonathan Cast]

On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 22:24 +0100, Iain Barnett wrote:
> On 10 Oct 2008, at 9:00 pm, Tommy M. McGuire wrote:
> 
> > Iain Barnett wrote:
> >> On 9 Oct 2008, at 9:33 pm, Andrew Coppin wrote:
> >>>  I think it's just the teaching of the language that needs work,  
> >>> not so much the language itself.
> >> As a newer user myself, I'd agree with this statement. I'd like to  
> >> see far more mundane tasks solved in tutorials.
> >
> > I would agree as well.  My own flailings led to Software Tools in  
> > Haskell[1], which taught me more about how to actually do things[2]  
> > than the textbooks that I have read.
> 
> That looks like a really useful resource, thanks. I've just read the  
> introduction and that is the same experience I've been having,  
> (ending up with bits of programs and nothing really practical). I'm  
> currently trying to write some simple games in Haskell, and learning  
> a lot along the way.
> 
> >
> >> Haskell is can obviously do some really interesting things, but  
> >> constantly having wikipedia open so I can look up whatever  
> >> mathematical doodah has just been mentioned can get draining. Even  
> >> Real World Haskell suffers a bit from this.
> >
> > The mathematical doodahs are *very* useful, much more so than any  
> > other language I have used, but it helps to have some kind of  
> > foundation to understand how and why.  I am frequently reminded of  
> > a "How to Draw" page from the Tick[3] comic, which went something  
> > like:
> >
> 
> Yep. They're certainly useful, it's just that explanation and  
> knowledge aren't always the fastest route to understanding. Sometimes  
> it's better just to get on with things and just do it - you don't  
> learn how to drive by getting lessons on the combustion engine from a  
> physicist :)
> 
> 
> On 10 Oct 2008, at 9:50 pm, Don Stewart wrote:
> >  Haskell makes
> > constructing true parsers just as easy,
> >
> 
> You're not speaking for me there! :)  I really like regex. It's a  
> domain specific functional language, so why rewrite the wheel?

It's a domain-specific *declarative* language.  Turning it into a true
functional language makes it something entirely different.

jcc