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Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

learnyouahaskell.com

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Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#21
It doesn’t seem to be the most popular opinion around, but I must say I got back into FP (which I came to profoundly despise after completing my CS education) thanks to this book.

It’s certainly not a book for the profane, despite its approachable aspect.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why LYAH wasn't good for me, when it's touted as being a great starting place It's not. It's a terrible starting resource. Majority of people I anecdotally hear gave up on Haskell seem to mention LYAH. Yes the material is there, but it's not presented in a way that generally sticks and fits pieces together. I guarantee someone will reply to this thread and say it worked for them, but in general people…

What would you recommend?

the spring 2013 edition of cis194[0] seems to be the most commonly recommended from previous threads here. due to its popularity a quick web search leads to a lot of secondary learning resources if you get stuck. i'm currently most of the way through it and it's been well presented and nicely challenging.

[0]http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis194/spring13/lectures.html

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#23

Terrible book. Please, please read Graham Hutton's Programming in Haskell. LYAH is full of incorrect definitions and broken analogies. Hutton on the other hand is up there with K&R for clear and concise definitions.

I have to echo this sentiment because LYAH came across as foreign and generally unhelpful. It seems that in educators' pursuits to make CS more accessible to a wider audience, this becomes one example of how not to do it.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#24
post #7

Still recall the advice form a classmate asking if I should learn Haskell -- he said "Just learn it because it'll change how you think about programming". I think people should learn it for this exact reason -- it really does change how you program as well as thinking about programming even if on a daily basis you're not writing pure Haskell or Clean or Scheme or whatnot. Common programming concepts like "iteration",…

I always think that this attitude is a little bit off. Obviously learning a new paradigm or a new language is great and expanding your horizon is very rarely bad, but I feel a little bit sad about shoehorning Haskell, or functional languages in general, still into this education category. Haskell is a very solid production language and you can put industrial grade software in Haskell out there, and it is in fact used…

I'm with you on Functional Languages being solid and useful, I've done quite a lot of work in Standard ML, but the parent's point wasn't only do it for the education, it was at least do it for the education.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#25
post #20

Terrible book. Please, please read Graham Hutton's Programming in Haskell. LYAH is full of incorrect definitions and broken analogies. Hutton on the other hand is up there with K&R for clear and concise definitions.

Yes and there is a newer 2016 version (2007 one came up for me first) https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Haskell-Graham-Hutton-ebo... (no referral link)

Thanks just bought it.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#29

Terrible book. Please, please read Graham Hutton's Programming in Haskell. LYAH is full of incorrect definitions and broken analogies. Hutton on the other hand is up there with K&R for clear and concise definitions.

As unfortunate as that may be, I'm glad to hear that maybe it's not that I can't learn Haskell, maybe it's just that I chose the wrong book. So here's to trying again with Hutton's book!

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#30

Another good (imho better) option is the Haskell book https://haskellbook.com/

It seems that it's development is stagnating, no visible updates for a long time, though I'm eagerly waiting for the release of it's final printed edition.

I wouldn’t hold your breath. Julie stopped work on it a long time ago. It’s pretty good as is though.
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