Learning Haskell

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Revision as of 18:47, 17 August 2006 by Bulatz (talk | contribs) (Tutorials<->Textbooks)
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Introduction

Haskell is a general purpose, purely functional programming language. This portal points to places where you can go if you want to learn Haskell.

The Introduction on the Haskell homepage tells you that 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. And there is a table comparing Haskell to other functional languages. Many questions about functional programming are answered by the comp.lang.functional FAQ.

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.

Books and tutorials

Tutorials Textbooks
Reference Course Material


Check Books and tutorials for a more comprehensive list.

(perhaps these pages can be merged somehow, or the more introductory material can go on this page, and the advanced books and papers can go on a different page?)