Difference between revisions of "Learning Haskell"

Revision as of 14:04, 23 July 2012

This portal points to places where you can go if you want to learn Haskell.

The Introduction to Haskell on the Haskell website tells you what Haskell gives you: substantially increased programmer productivity, shorter, clearer, and more maintainable code, fewer errors, higher reliability, a smaller semantic gap between the programmer and the language, shorter lead times. There is an old but still relevant paper about Why Functional Programming Matters (PDF) by John Hughes. More recently, Sebastian Sylvan wrote an article about Why Haskell Matters.

There is also a table comparing Haskell to other functional languages. Many questions about functional programming are answered by the comp.lang.functional FAQ.

You can ask questions to members of the haskell community on maillists, IRC, or StackOverflow.

Implementations

Here is an overview about Haskell implementations (for new, or non-expert users, we recommend starting with the Haskell Platform).

	Messages	Size	Tools	Remarks
GHC	+	-	++	Many language extensions; generated code is very fast. The most popular implementation.
Hugs	+/-	++	-	Fast compilation; used a lot for learning Haskell and rapid code development. See also WinHugs.
nhc98	+	+	++	Profiling, debugging, tracing. Not actively developed.
Yhc	+	+	?	Compiles to bytecodes. Runtime easily portable. Not actively developed.
Helium	++	++	-	No type classes (yet!) and thus incompatible with most material on this site. Made for teaching/learning. Excellent error messages.
UHC	+/-	-	+/-	Developed for experimentation with language features. As a Haskell compiler still under development.

Detailed information on the implementations can be found in a separate article.

Material

Below there are links to certain introductory material. If you want to dig deeper, see Books and tutorials.

Textbooks

Online tutorials

Meta-tutorial
Haskell Wikibook A long tutorial on Haskell that includes "Yet Another Haskell Tutorial", "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours" and "All about monads".
YAHT - Yet Another Haskell Tutorial (good tutorial available online, also here)
Two dozen short lessons
A Gentle Introduction to Haskell - classic text, but not so gentle really :D
Haskell-Tutorial
Online Haskell Course (German)
Haskell for C Programmers
Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! Beautiful, illustrated Haskell tutorial for programmers with less of a functional programming background.
Learning Haskell Ongoing tutorial in the form of youtube videos; updates slowly.

Advanced tutorials

Hitchhikers guide to Haskell
Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours
Tackling the Awkward Squad (on I/O, interfacing to C, concurrency and exceptions)

Debugging/profiling/optimization

Monads

Type classes

Generic programming

[Dead link; IA backup] Scrap your boilerplate

Popular libraries

Reference

The official language definition: Language and library specification
[Broken link]Haskell Newbie
[Broken link] Tour of the Haskell Prelude
Haskell Reference
Haskell Reference card
A tour of the Haskell Monad functions
[Broken link] Tour of the Helium Prelude
Some common Hugs error messages
The Haskell Cheatsheet - A reference card and mini-tutorial in one.
A Glossary of common terminology.

Course material

Introduction to Functional Programming, Chalmers
[Broken link] Programming in Haskell, Chalmers
Advanced Functional Programming, Chalmers
[Dead link] Advanced Advanced Functional Programming, Chalmers
CS 11 Caltech
Functional programming: course notes (English, Dutch, Spanish), slides in Dutch
CS1011: Tutorials, lab exercises and solutions
[Hungarian] Functional Programming: online Haskell exercises (maybe Explorer can't show xml content)
Stanford - Functional Systems in Haskell

@@ Line 46: / Line 46: @@
 | Compiles to bytecodes. Runtime easily portable. ''Not actively developed.''
 |-
-| [http://www.cs.uu.nl/helium/ Helium]
+| [http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Helium Helium]
 | ++
 | ++
@@ Line 68: / Line 68: @@
 * [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/SOE/ The Haskell School of Expression]
-* [http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/people/staff/sjt/craft2e/ Haskell: the Craft of Functional Programming]
+* [http://www.haskellcraft.com/ Haskell: the Craft of Functional Programming]
 * [http://www.prenhall.com/allbooks/ptr_0134843460.html Introduction to Functional Programming using Haskell]
 * [http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item1129654/Introduction%20to%20Functional%20Programming%20Systems%20Using%20Haskell/?site_locale=en_US An Introduction to Functional Programming Systems Using Haskell]
 * [http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lapalme/Algorithms-functional.html Algorithms: A functional programming approach]
-* [http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths, and Programming]
+* [http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths, and Programming] (also freely [http://fldit-www.cs.uni-dortmund.de/~peter/PS07/HR.pdf available online]).
 * [http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/book.html Programming in Haskell]
 * [http://book.realworldhaskell.org/ Real World Haskell]
+* [http://nostarch.com/lyah.htm Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!]
 === Online tutorials ===
@@ Line 87: / Line 88: @@
 * [http://ccfit.nsu.ru/~ikuznecov/doc/Haskell%20Tutorial%20for%20C%20Programmers/intro.html Haskell for C Programmers]
 * [http://learnyouahaskell.com/ Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!] Beautiful, illustrated Haskell tutorial for programmers with less of a functional programming background.
+* [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2672EBC57C1F5F9B Learning Haskell] Ongoing tutorial in the form of youtube videos; updates slowly.
 === Advanced tutorials ===
@@ Line 99: / Line 101: @@
 * [http://sigfpe.blogspot.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monads-and.html You Could Have Invented Monads! (And Maybe You Already Have.)]
-* [http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/wadler95monads.html Monads for Functional Programming]
+* [http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/marktoberdorf/baastad.pdf Monads for Functional Programming]
-* [Dead link] [http://www.haskell.org/all_about_monads/html/ All about monads]
+* [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/All_About_Monads All about monads]
 * [[IO inside|IO inside: down the Rabbit Hole]]
 * [http://spbhug.folding-maps.org/wiki/MonadsEn Monads]
@@ Line 123: / Line 125: @@
 * The official language definition: [[Language and library specification]]
-* [[HaskellNewbie|Haskell Newbie]]
+* [Broken link][[HaskellNewbie|Haskell Newbie]]
-* [http://cs.anu.edu.au/student/comp1100/haskell/tourofprelude.html Tour of the Haskell Prelude]
+* [Broken link] [http://cs.anu.edu.au/student/comp1100/haskell/tourofprelude.html Tour of the Haskell Prelude]
 * [http://zvon.org/other/haskell/Outputglobal/index.html Haskell Reference]
 * Haskell [[Reference card]]
 * [http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html A tour of the Haskell Monad functions]
-* [http://www.cs.uu.nl/helium/docs/TourOfPrelude.html Tour of the Helium Prelude]
+* [Broken link] [http://www.cs.uu.nl/helium/docs/TourOfPrelude.html Tour of the Helium Prelude]
 * [http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/people/staff/sjt/craft2e/errors/allErrors.html Some common Hugs error messages]
 * [http://cheatsheet.codeslower.com/ The Haskell Cheatsheet] - A reference card and mini-tutorial in one.
@@ Line 135: / Line 137: @@
 === Course material ===
 * [http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/TDA555/ Introduction to Functional Programming, Chalmers]
-* [http://www.cs.chalmers.se/Cs/Grundutb/Kurser/d1pt/d1pta/external.html Programming in Haskell, Chalmers]
+* [Broken link] [http://www.cs.chalmers.se/Cs/Grundutb/Kurser/d1pt/d1pta/external.html Programming in Haskell, Chalmers]
 * [http://www.cse.chalmers.se/edu/course/afp/ Advanced Functional Programming, Chalmers]
 * [Dead link] [http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~koen/Aafp/ Advanced Advanced Functional Programming, Chalmers]
@@ Line 142: / Line 144: @@
 * [http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1011/05s2/ CS1011]: Tutorials, lab exercises and solutions
 * [Hungarian] [http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/Index.xml Functional Programming]: online Haskell exercises (maybe Explorer can't show xml content)
+* Stanford - [http://www.scs.stanford.edu/11au-cs240h/ Functional Systems in Haskell]