Difference between revisions of "Learning Haskell"

Revision as of 18:06, 25 August 2006

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 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.

Implementations

Here is an overview about Haskell implementations:

	Messages	Size	Tools	Remarks
Hugs	+/-	++	-	Fast compilation; used a lot for learning Haskell and rapid code development. See also WinHugs.
GHC	+	-	++	Many language extensions; generated code is very fast
NHC	?	+	++	Profiling, debugging, tracing
Yhc	?	+	?	Compiles to bytecodes. Runtime easily portable. Still under heavy development.
Helium	++	++	-	No type classes (yet!) and thus incompatible with most material on this site. Made for teaching/learning.

Material

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

Textbooks

Tutorials

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)

Reference

Course material

Programming in Haskell, Chalmers
CS 11 Caltech
Functional programming: course notes (English, Dutch, Spanish), slides in Dutch
CS1011: Tutorials, lab exercises and solutions

@@ Line 70: / Line 70: @@
 * [http://undergraduate.csse.uwa.edu.au/units/230.301/lectureNotes/tourofprelude.html A Tour of the Haskell Prelude (i.e. predefined functions)]
-* [http://www.isi.edu/~hdaume/htut Yet Another Haskell Tutorial (best tutorial available online)]
+* [http://www.cs.utah.edu/~hal/htut/ Yet Another Haskell Tutorial (best tutorial available online)]
 * [http://www.cs.ou.edu/~rlpage/fpclassCurrent/textbook/haskell.shtml Two dozen short lessons]
 * [http://www.haskell.org/tutorial/ A Gentle Introduction to Haskell (classis text)]