Haskell User Group

Haskell User Group Starter Kit

Want to start a Haskell User Group? These resources may help. They are geared towards a non-academic crowd who probably does not know anything about Haskell or Functional Programming and have regular meetings to talk about Haskell or FP. This page has a slightly different emphasis than a Haskell for Beginners one or a How to Learn Haskell page might. It specifically plays off the tendency for Haskell User Groups to have people with varying degrees of expertise/familiarity in Haskell.

Topics and debates

Great topics to cover

• What is functional programming?
• Solving problems a functional way
• Practical Haskell - IO, etc
• Laziness
• Typeclasses
• Monads (save for later)

Coding Dojo

Best exercises for a Haskell coding Dojo

• Project Euler 1 is great for comparing languages - there's no such thing as "too" simple

Papers

Must-read academic papers for a non-academic non-FP crowd. Good Functional Pearls might also be nice here.

1. Why Functional Programming Matters
2. Tackling the Awkward Squad
3. Composing Contracts
4. Beautiful Concurrency

User group tips and tricks

Most likely external links to non-Haskell-specific sites

• Consider GitHub as a place to put your code samples and talks. GitHub allows for organisation repositories, eg the Functional Brighton one
• When trying to demonstrate techniques/technologies, don't be afraid of making your examples “too trivial”. Err on the side of simple.