> > FWIW: This is my second or third day with Haskell. I was totally stumped > until I searched out "Yet Another Haskell Tutorial". I tried starting with > "A Gentle Introduction...", but it never told me how to get started. It > talked at great length about the language, and I'm certain that it will be > very useful in a week or so, but it sure isn't the way to get started. > The Gentle Introduction is not at all gentle (it is excellent at what it does, but it assumes a level of sophistication that is well above what a large portion of beginning Haskell programmers have achieved when they begin learning the language).
There are several other tutorial's on the net that are far better at introducing the neophyte to the language (as you've already discovered), but my experience in the classroom is that Simon Thompson's book (The Craft of Functional Programming) is probably just about right as an introduction (and subsequently as a reference as well), especially for self study. Now, please do not misunderstand: Simply because I suggest Thompson's book does not mean I am trying to sell it--but over the past 4 years or so, I have not yet found anything else that got my students writing the language as quickly, and please be assured that they have demonstrated quite some skill at ferreting out introductory material on the web (I need to be quite careful with the exercies I assign to make sure that the answers can't be copied . . . :)> ). Last, you should note that Thompson, like just about everything else on the subject, is far from complete--there is all sorts of other "stuff" that you will pick up from the available Haskell system documentation, but that can wait until you have simple programs running. Best, Murray Gross CIS Dept., Brooklyn College _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe