ANNOUNCE: Draft TOC of Haskell in a Nutshell

[Manuel M. T. Chakravarty]

Johannes Waldmann <joe@isun.informatik.uni-leipzig.de> wrote,

> > However, I would move IO further to the front.  
> > For any "real life" programming, IO is essential...
> 
> I am currently teaching a Functional Programming lecture (notes in German: 
> http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~joe/edu/ws00/praxis/skript/)
> and I also used this approach: use the do-notation intuitively
> (for text IO and graphics, using SOE book), 
> and explain monads later (with parser combinators and interpreters).
> 
> This could be driven to the extreme: not only hide the word "monad",
> but also "functional". The title would be "Imperative programming in Haskell"
> (as  S. Peyton Jones says in Tackling the Awkward Squad: 
> "Haskell is the world's finest imperative programming language").
> 
> The students would start writing do-notated programs in the IO monad,
> starting with  putStrLn "Hello World";
> and gradually the emphasis is shifted from sequencing (the "semicolon")
> to "what can we do on the righthand side of  let x = ... ",
> thus introducing functional programming.

Starting with 

  putStrLn "Hello World"

is a good idea and this would exactly be my approach when
teaching students who already know some programming language
(in the course I did last term, it was their first
programming experience; therefore, I waited until Week 5).

However, I don't think it is necessary (or desirable) to
hide "functional".  With "monad" it is a different story, as
it is a complicated sounding word, which is not easily
explained (to non-mathematicians).  And it is not necessary;
we are not starting on fixed point and domain theory either
when explaining recursive functions.

Actually, I did run a moderately detailed survey at the end
about what the students found interesting/boring and
difficult/easy etc (and with a good sample size, too: close
to 500 students filled in the survey).  I am planing to
summarise the results and post them here sometime.

Cheers,
Manuel