Learn You a Haskell for Great Good • Hacker News Board

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#141

Post by js8 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:11 AM UTC

neon_electro wrote: post #8

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #6

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?

I would start with Haskell Programming from first principles, as it is recommended by many and it looks good (I have to admit I started with LYAH but content-wise, HPFFP is much better).

I also recommend reading these web documents as a supplement:

http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/

https://wiki.haskell.org/All_About_Monads

https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia

https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2017/09/all-about-strictness

I am now reading Haskell High Performance Programming (https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/haskell-hig...), and while the book is more intermediate (it assumes that you can find the documentation and read the Haskell code yourself), I think it is a good overview of how to use modern Haskell in real projects.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#142

Post by thom » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #131

It seems obvious to me that LYAH is an imitation of Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby, and that neither is actually a good learning resource. I don't mean to disparage these as works of art, but _why did it first, _why did it better, and if you actually want to learn either ruby or haskell neither should be your first stop.

Yeah, I'm as much a fan of whimsy as the next guy, but every language wanting one of these twee storybook intros is increasingly grating (Clojure has Clojure for the Brave and True etc).

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#143

Post by Oreb » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 9:51 AM UTC

jose_zap wrote: post #49

I wish this was shared less, it does a really bad job at teaching practical Haskell skills. For a long time this book left me with the feeling that I was unable to learn the language.

People have different styles of learning. I loved LYaHfGG, but hated Haskell Programming from First Principles. As is evident from this thread, many others feel the opposite way. Both books deserve to exist and be shared frequently.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#144

Post by kitd » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 10:47 AM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #16

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #6

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…

I think the enthusiasm for LYAH should also be seen in context. Real World Haskell was the first book that made it to a wider audience. And while was is full of useful information, it is a very uneven book that works badly as an introduction to Haskell. We once had a reading group where we read RWH, most colleagues dropped out after the first 3-4 chapters. In comparison, LYAH was a book that was far more straightforw…

Hutton's book was my favourite too when I was learning Haskell. My only gripe was it used a proper typeface for it's code samples, making mapping to keyboard strokes an unnecessary cognitive effort.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#145

Post by sridca » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 12:43 PM UTC

djur wrote: post #111

sridca wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read more than half of this book, and sadly I did not enjoy it at all. Read it only if you enjoy long-winded verbose explanations. Hutton's or Bird's is concise yet explanatory.

It was valuable to me as pretty much the only Haskell resource I read that addressed more complex concepts without hitting a point where they needed to resort to mathematics.

I've never had to resort to mathematics (like category theory) when learning to use Haskell in real-world projects. And I don't think Hutton's or Bird's rely on mathematics for teaching Haskell.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#146

Post by sridca » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

sixstringbudha wrote: post #120

myegorov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to start a flame war, but imho this is my definition of a "terrible book". Of the everything and the kitchen sink variety. By contrast, I very much enjoyed LYAH, not least for its self-effacing humor. Hutton was too dry for me. There's a less well-known "Thinking Functionally with Haskell" book by Richard Bird that is concise and targets the mathematically inclined crowd.

It is something that is marketed very well. From the sample content, It didn't look interesting to me at all. LYAH may not be the greatest Haskell tutorial. But it makes an easy read. That means, you are not afraid to go back to it again and again, Which is the crucial aspect of learning anything sufficiently complex or new or both..

I agree re: marketing -- something I had easily fell for. One of the authors has moved onto writing another Haskell book (a "work of art" apparently), but this time my interest, for an intermediate level book, is elsewhere: https://intermediatehaskell.com/ (which would be more informative--thus pedagogically sound--than a work of art).

Lesson learned: don't fall for the marketing of art.

Generally the best way to learn is by actually doing projects: http://www.haskellforall.com/2017/10/advice-for-haskell-begi...

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#147

Post by gnufx » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

svat wrote: post #101

aye01 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haskell was the first programming language taught at our college when I was a student, where some of the students hadn't even used a computer before. It went fine. (I think it was actually better than other languages would have been, as many of the students had a background in mathematics and might have been confused by things like "x = x + 1", while they were comfortable with the idea of a function, at least as used…

Right. Long ago a group of Oxford physicists with no computing experience were baffled by "LET X=X+1", which the demonstrator failed to explain in terms of a storage model.

Orwell (Haskell predecessor) was used later at Oxford, and I think ML at the other university. "Preparing to study Computer Science at Cambridge" once said "Teaching yourself to program can lead to your picking up bad habits that will hinder your progress later. In particular, you should avoid languages like C++."

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#148

Post by 3rdAccount » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 10:43 AM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #114

3rdAccount wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bothered me too. I use a REPL everyday, but you have to know how to write full programs too.

What book on any language shows you whole programs that couldn't be seen in repl (assuming a repl exists)

I have over 25 programming books in my cube and another dozen or so at home. I'd say roughly 1/3 tend to favor full practical programs interlaced with snippets. The full programs are usually 1/2 to a few pages in each chapter and are in general, not something I'd try to cram into the REPL piece by piece.

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#149

Post by appleflaxen » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 12:38 PM UTC

oalessandr wrote: post #19

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

for others that run into problems with the link: it does not work with https:// (at least for me)

Change it to http://www.haskellbook.com

Re: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

#150

Post by NateEag » Fri, Aug 24, 2018, 12:53 AM UTC

marvy wrote: post #128

NateEag wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML is by definition intrinsic to Web development. LYAH is not intrinsic to Haskell programming.

Let me try to make hexane360's point more explicitly: Imagine a hypothetical universe where all Haskell books are equally good, but some are more popular than others (maybe they have well known authors, or catchy titles, or are available for free online, or something). In particular, imagine Haskell Book Number 7 (HB#7 for short) gets 99% "market share". Then if someone says "most people who gave up on Haskell used t…

I see what you're saying, and it makes some sense.

As you say, though, LYAH is almost certainly not at 99% market share. It's definitely not at the 100% market share HTML has in Web development.

The universe is too complex to design a statistically-valid study for everything you want to know (though I definitely understand the urge to do that). At the end of the day, anecdotal evidence may not be great, but it's often better than nothing, and nothing is often the only other practical option.