I love Haskell, it's incredibly powerful, fast and elegant. However, I switched to Erlang because it's a heck of a lot easier to learn and it's quicker to sit down with it and produce something tangible. While I struggled to learn the concepts of Haskell, I immediately "clicked" with Erlang. I still wish to look up Haskell again though, it's very intriguing.
The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all
31–34 of 34 posts
Re: The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all
#32It would be nice for this site to give more detailed advice on studying Haskell. Learning a language should be a side effect of studying its canon of programs. Is there a book that relates to Haskell as TAoCP does to machine code, SICP to Scheme, K&R to C, and the dragon book to Lex and Yacc?
http://learnyouahaskell.com/ A very enjoyable tutorial. Supposedly, this site was going to come out in book form. If/when it does, it should become the de-facto "Camel book" for Haskell.
March 2011, 400 pp.
Re: The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there a book that relates to Haskell as TAoCP does to machine code, SICP to Scheme, K&R to C, and the dragon book to Lex and Yacc? My vote would be for Richard Bird and Phil Wadler's Intro to functional programming using Haskell.
Possibly more up to date in Hutton's Programming in Haskell. I've heard very good things about it: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/book.html
I've read both books and like them both.
However, I prefer Bird/Wadler better because there's a pervasive "let's derive this"/"let's prove this" approach to the topics. By which I mean, given a spec, let's derive a program that does the task (and later, let's optimize this function using laws we know such as relations between map and filter, the laws of fold). Hutton takes this type of approach only in his final chapter.
Hutton is definitely easier, and does a better job of teaching you the core of Haskell, however Bird/Wadler teaches you how to derive programs from spec (further covered in Bird's Pearls of Functional Programming book).
I think the difference is like the one between How to Design Programs and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
Re: The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all
#34It would be nice for this site to give more detailed advice on studying Haskell. Learning a language should be a side effect of studying its canon of programs. Is there a book that relates to Haskell as TAoCP does to machine code, SICP to Scheme, K&R to C, and the dragon book to Lex and Yacc?
> Is there a book that relates to Haskell as TAoCP does to machine code, SICP to Scheme, K&R to C, and the dragon book to Lex and Yacc? My vote would be for Richard Bird and Phil Wadler's Intro to functional programming using Haskell.
I have read a few chapters of this very beautiful book by Richard Bird called "Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design":
http://www.amazon.com/Pearls-Functional-Algorithm-Design-Ric...
You should definitely check it out. If you already know Haskell and you love algorithms, that book will probably be more interesting than the Intro to Haskell book.
Also check out Okasaki's book of functional data structures: http://www.amazon.com/Purely-Functional-Structures-Chris-Oka...