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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

#91

Post by h4b4n3r0 »

ilovecaching wrote: post #11

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.

+1. I want a book that walks me through a real, well designed, functional (if you pardon the pun), useful piece of software, end to end. All these FP books are too enamored with language features, instead of showing you how a programmer proficient in the language would solve practical problems in it.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#92

Post by rs86 »

Cieplak wrote: post #50

Haskell is hard, mainly because it's normally not a first language, and the first language people learn probably has Algol-like syntax (e.g. C, Java). I think Erlang is a bit easier to learn due to having fewer features, and for me was the gateway drug to Haskell. It let me learn to program with recursion instead of loops, and pattern matching instead of `if`s. The type system is the best part of Haskell, but unfortu…

I don't think Haskell is hard, but that's once you know it. It takes a lot of insights until you can see that it is really simple. A lot of code can look unreadable but that's just until you become familiar with the idioms.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#93

Post by derefr »

ilovecaching wrote: post #88
creichert wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terrible book. Definitely overstated and not good advice for beginners. My advice to beginners would be: - Read all the Haskell books available at your disposal. (In addition to LYAH and the Hutton book, I would say Learning Haskell From First Principles and Get Programming with Haskell are great, https://www.manning.com/books/get-programming-with-haskell , http://haskellbook.com/ ) - When you hit something that do…

Beginners want a clear place to start learning from. All those things you said are overwhelming and unnecessary. Some of your recommendations would be fine as next steps, but to start with, just read Hutton's book. It is small enough to be read in just a few days.

I think there are two different definitions of "beginner" being used here.

1. Someone who has never programmed before, and is perhaps young. Someone who has to be guided. A novice.

2. Someone who is new to this particular language, but is experienced at programming generally; who is attempting to learn the language to use it "in anger" (i.e. with a specific goal in mind and a timeline for that goal); and who is willing to "do whatever it takes" to learn the skill. A journeyman beginning a new path.

A novice needs a definitive textbook. A journeyman-beginner, on the other hand, needs definitive primary sources, however scattered.

If you're a high-school student learning precalculus, what do you need? A math textbook.

If you're a post-graduate student learning some specific arcane sub-discipline of math to see whether it could be used to solve the novel problem you've decided to do your thesis on, what do you need? Primary sources. All the journal papers in that field you can get your hands on. There's no one textbook that could possibly help you; the only truth you will find is the truth "between the lines" of everything you read.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#94

Post by zinclozenge »

myegorov wrote: post #87
andrepd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Personally I hate these kinds of books. This style, long-winded "cheery" explanations, constantly "playful", as if I was a small child that couldn't hold my attention for 2 minutes before you had to dangle a colourful toy in front of me. Like they're afraid to be serious for a moment (so many exclamation marks). I'm not here for humour, or to have a pleasant conversation. I'm here to learn. Just give me clear…

I suspect few physics students would agree with you about the didactic value of LL. The audiences for the two types of books couldn't be more different.

They're definitely not the books you want for your primary learning source, but as a 2nd source pretty good for sure as long as you're comfortable filling in computation details between equations.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#95

Post by [deleted] »

ilovecaching wrote: post #89
jbritton wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I found LYAH to be a great book. If there are places where the book is incorrect, I didn't have the background knowledge to notice. I felt the book did a good job explaining applicatives and monads by starting at the very basics and very slowly ramping up the complexity to a complete understanding. I know with many math books I have had a problem where some transformation morphs equation A into equation B…

Have you read Hutton's book?

[deleted]

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#96

Post by khannate »

aye01 wrote: post #81
ilovecaching wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graham has simple and precise definitions. They're not mutually exclusive properties. No mathematical background or vocabulary is required to read Grahams book. The book is used in introductory computer science courses for undergraduate freshman.

i have never heard of haskell being a language used for teaching introductory computer science courses. that sounds like a nightmare. i'd imagine mid-to-upper div classes.

UChicago's honors introductory sequence uses it: http://cmsc-16100.cs.uchicago.edu/

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#97

Post by derefr »

andrepd wrote: post #72
ilovecaching wrote: post #11

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.

Agreed. Personally I hate these kinds of books. This style, long-winded "cheery" explanations, constantly "playful", as if I was a small child that couldn't hold my attention for 2 minutes before you had to dangle a colourful toy in front of me. Like they're afraid to be serious for a moment (so many exclamation marks). I'm not here for humour, or to have a pleasant conversation. I'm here to learn. Just give me clear…

> Like they're afraid to be serious for a moment (so many exclamation marks).

I rarely speak with enthusiasm... but teaching or explaining programming to people just gets me really, really excited. Putting myself in the shoes of a novice who is about to have some realization about the nature of an algorithm makes me shiver with anticipatory glee.

It's hard not to put that into my writing. It's not fake in the slightest—it's the only time I can let it shine through just how much I love this stuff, and it'd be fake to hide it. Even the constant "cute analogies" are part-and-parcel of this exuberance—symptoms of temporary hypomania brought about during the writing process.

Certainly, I could go back and edit all this stuff away. But, really, should I? I never had a role-model who was as excited about programming as I am. I wish I had had one. I, therefore, find it hard to restrain myself from being that person for others.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#99

Post by dorkwood »

creichert wrote: post #79
ilovecaching wrote: post #11

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.

> Terrible book. Definitely overstated and not good advice for beginners. My advice to beginners would be: - Read all the Haskell books available at your disposal. (In addition to LYAH and the Hutton book, I would say Learning Haskell From First Principles and Get Programming with Haskell are great, https://www.manning.com/books/get-programming-with-haskell , http://haskellbook.com/ ) - When you hit something that do…

I think this is good advice for learning any topic in general. Learn from a diverse range of sources.

When I was first learning to code I can remember deciding to stick with one learning resource so as to not overwhelm myself. Eventually I hit a road block and wasn’t able to push past it. I blamed myself for not being able to understand what I was reading. I wasn’t smart enough.

When I tried again years later, instead of sticking with one resource I flicked between several different ones at once. Seeing how different people explained the same concept was extremely helpful in getting things to “click”.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#100

Post by allenleee »

Honestly, this is not a good book for beginner.

Here are some FREE Functional Programming (Haskell,Purescript)learning resources from 101 to building product: https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/projects/9

More, over 20 FREE FP books: https://github.com/allenleein/brains/tree/master/Zen-of-Func...

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