Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but when working on material like this on your own it is a slog because both of these courses are designed to be taught live. So beware. However they are probably the best courses available online. Definitely, this is why we're working on a book. We acknowledge cis194 and NICTA course are difficult and designed to be done as part of a class. That's also why we suggest Thompson's book as a fallback. There isn't a boo…
Good answers. To be clear I am not complaining. Actually I love it. I love struggling through it and the feeling of triumph when solving those problems. I think the difficulty is a rite of passage to become a functional programmer, however smoother ramps would help, and I am sure your book will be a great help and is much needed.
Oh sure, I didn't figure you were. I just wanted (other) people to understand that, yes, we're aware of the friction and difficulties and that we're working on it.
>I think the difficulty is a rite of passage to become a functional programmer
Hum. There's some place and purpose for this, such as with professional fields like law and medicine. I'm not sure add'l difficulty beyond what is essential to understanding the material is valuable except as a historic social "glue" for embattled/relatively small programming language communities like Haskell and ML.
>I am sure your book will be a great help and is much needed.
We hope so and believe it'll be an improvement. We've been testing the material pretty aggressively with people completely new to programming. We're going to start testing with people that already code but don't know FP soon.
If the book sells well enough, we've got follow-up books in mind (4+ in the queue).