the real world of Haskell books (Re: [Haskell-cafe] Online Real World Haskell, problem with Sqlite3 chapters)

[Ross Paterson]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 01:04:03PM +0100, Claus Reinke wrote:
> Seriously, though, what is the RWH authors' plan for tackling
> the eternal frustration of Haskell book authors, a moving target?
>
> There used to be a time when one could guess the poster's
> Haskell book from their question topics:
>
>    - 'HGL' doesn't work: Hudak's book
>    - 'fromInt' issues: Thompson's book
>
> The problem arises because the books survive far longer than
> the version of the code base they refer to. The only way to reduce this 
> friction has been to avoid fast-changing details, eg, focussing on 
> programming, problem solving, reasoning (Hutton, Thompson,
> Bird), and even that isn't safe ('n+k', 'fromInt',..).

One of the specific aims of Haskell 98 was to provide a stable base
for authors.  It did not include fromInt, which was an internal quirk
of the Hugs implementation, and nor did any other Haskell implementation.