From: Benjamin L. Russell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Haskell] on starting Haskell-Edu, a new education-related
Haskell-related mailing list
To: "The Haskell Mailing List" <haskell@haskell.org>
Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 8:37 PM
I am interested in starting a new mailing list on
Haskell.org, aimed mainly at liberal arts teachers and
elementary-level learners of Haskell, called
"Haskell-Edu: The Haskell Educational Mailing
List." This new mailing list would be guided by the
principle that Haskell is useful not just in research, but
also in teaching programming as part of a liberal arts
education, on a par with Scheme. When I suggested the idea
of this mailing list to Simon Marlow, the Haskell.org
mailing list administrator, he suggested that I post this
idea on The Haskell Mailing List, so I am posting it here
to ask for feedback.
The main purposes of this new (proposed) mailing list would
be as follows:
1) To provide a primarily non-research-oriented discussion
forum to serve the needs of users wishing to focus on the
uses of Haskell in education, such as in high school and in
introductory computer science college courses, as opposed to
in research.
2) To provide a primarily non-research-oriented discussion
forum to serve the needs of non-computer-science students
of Haskell who wish to focus on Haskell as a language for
learning programming as part of a well-rounded a liberal
arts education, as opposed to an
engineering/mathematics/science-oriented education.
Currently, there are two main Haskell mailing lists:
a) The Haskell Mailing List, currently used mainly for
announcements and for non-beginner discussions
b) The Haskell-Cafe, currently ostensibly used for
everything else, but in fact used primarily for serious
academic computer-science research-oriented discussion of
the language Haskell.
Neither mailing list addresses Haskell as a tool for
teaching functional programming as part of a liberal arts
education, and while The Haskell Cafe is ostensibly
responsible for addressing beginner questions, I have
witnessed several instances in which new users who were not
familiar with the academic culture of The Haskell Cafe have
been frowned upon for either posting messages that did not
assume enough mathematical background, or for posting
messages that were written in a tongue-in-cheek style, and
that therefore did not fit into the serious tone of the
mailing list.
(For example, a few months ago, one poster received a
private e-mail message from another poster asking the
former not to "pollute" The Haskell-Cafe Mailing
List for assuming that screen pixel resolution was somehow
related to the precision of an algorithm that picked points
randomly from a square in approximating pi. Avoiding this
question required the knowledge that screen resolution
could be considered independently from the precision of the
algorithm itself, but while this point may be elementary to
mathematicians and researchers, the poster was not familiar
enough with the issue to grasp this immediately, and
received the above-mentioned response.)
This new mailing list is intended to cover both the issue
of teaching Haskell as part of a liberal arts curriculum,
and of answering beginner questions about Haskell from
students who may not have a sophisticated mathematics
background. The primary audience of this new mailing list
would be educators and students in a liberal arts
curriculum who are interested in studying Haskell for
studying functional programming. Currently, the language
Scheme is often used in this context (even though Scheme is
not a true functional programming language), but Haskell has
recently been gaining ground rapidly as a programming
language in industry as well, and many students of Haskell
may either not have a computer science background, or may
not have a sophisticated mathematical background. Posts
from such users may tend to irritate serious researchers,
who are impatient and hard-pressed for time to find
valuable information to aid their research, but may be
welcome
in a more education-focused context.
It would seem that creating a new mailing list,
Haskell-Edu, focusing on using Haskell in teaching
programming in a liberal arts context, and fielding
questions from students in that context, would help
increase the scope of Haskell users, and help spread
knowledge about Haskell to potential future users in
industry. Teachers in a liberal arts curriculum could
discuss teaching Haskell in a non-research context, and
students of Haskell with a liberal arts-related background
would be able to ask elementary questions to educators
willing to discuss such questions, without being expected
to have a sophisticated mathematical or computer science
background.
-- Benjamin L. Russell
--- On Sat, 6/28/08, Simon Marlow
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Simon Marlow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: on starting a new Haskell-related mailing
list
To: "Benjamin L. Russell"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "John Peterson"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2008, 4:20 AM
Hi Benjamin,
Normally we create new mailing lists when the new list
has
a narrow
focus and covers a clearly unoccupied niche. In this
case
you're
proposing a list that is very broad, and so I think it
needs discussion
amongst the community before we create the list, so
that we
can keep a
consistent strategy.
That's not to say that I disagree with your
proposal.
But it doesn't
seem immediately clear what the focus would be, and
why
haskell-cafe
shouldn't serve the purpose. One thing that
isn't
clear is whether the
list you're proposing is for people interested in
*teaching* Haskell (in
which case I'd say it's a great idea), or
people
*learning* Haskell (in
which case I'd consider carefully whether
haskell-cafe
shoudn't be
serving that need). That's something you need to
clarify when proposing
this list to the community.
So I suggest you send this proposal out to
haskell@haskell.org in the
first instance, and see what response you get.
Discussion
should move
to haskell-cafe quickly.
Cheers,
Simon
Benjamin L. Russell wrote:
Greetings,
John Peterson suggested that I send you an e-mail
message requesting you to perform set-up of a new
Haskell-related mailing list that I plan to
moderate/administrate, since he said that you are the
administrator of the mailing lists on Haskell.org.
My name is Benjamin L. Russell, and I am
interested in
starting a new mailing list on Haskell, which I plan
to call
Haskell-Edu, specifically devoted to non-research
beginner-level educational matters, guided by the
philosophy that Haskell should be more accessible to
non-computer science major students.
This topic is not covered by any of the other
mailing
lists. I have regularly read both Haskell and
Haskell-Cafe
for the past six months or so, but the former is
devoted to
announcements, and the latter de facto to research
matters.
Also, the general tone of Haskell-Cafe is overly
academic
and research-oriented, and I feel that this creates an
unnecessary learning curve for non-computer science
majors
interested in learning Haskell.
Since John Peterson recommended that I request
you to
set-up the mailing list on Haskell.org, could you
please
set it whenever you have free time, as follows:
Name of Mailing List: Haskell-Edu
E-mail Address: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Description: The Haskell-Edu Mailing
List:
Discussion About Non-research Issues on Haskell in
Education
Could you please advise me on what I need to do
to
start this mailing list? Should I host it on
haskell.org,
or just start it by myself using a non-Haskell.org
mailing
list service? Also, how should I have it listed in
the
"www.haskell.org Mailing Lists"
(http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo) page for the
benefit of other members of the Haskell community?
Thank you very much for your time and
cooperation.
Sincerely yours,
Benjamin L. Russell
--- On Fri, 6/27/08, John Peterson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: John Peterson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: on starting a new
Haskell-related
mailing list
To: "Benjamin L. Russell"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, June 27, 2008, 12:05 AM
Hi Benjamin,
There's no problem starting a new mailing
list. Simon
Marlow is the administrator of our lists - if
you
drop him
and email he'll do the setup for
Haskell.org.
Once the
list is going, you can go into the wiki and
add it
to the
appropriate pages.
We've had a bunch of these special
interest
lists and
most of them go dead after a few months but
you
never know
...
John
--- On Thu, 6/26/08, Benjamin L. Russell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Benjamin L. Russell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: on starting a new Haskell-related
mailing
list
To: "John Peterson"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008, 4:37 PM
Greetings,
My name is Benjamin L. Russell, and I am
interested in
starting a new mailing list on Haskell, which
I
plan to
call Haskell-Edu, specifically devoted to
non-research
beginner-level educational matters, guided by
the
philosophy that Haskell should be more
accessible
to
non-computer science major students. (This
message is
being addressed to you because I had already
sent
the
portion below twice to other administrators
at
Haskell.org,
first to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and then
to
[EMAIL PROTECTED], but had not
received a
response
on either occasion.)
This topic is not covered by any of the other
mailing
lists. I have regularly read both Haskell
and
Haskell-Cafe
for the past six months or so, but the former
is
devoted to
announcements, and the latter de facto to
research
matters.
Also, the general tone of Haskell-Cafe is
overly
academic
and research-oriented, and I feel that this
creates an
unnecessary learning curve for non-computer
science majors
interested in learning Haskell.
Could you please advise me on what I need to
do to
start
this mailing list? Should I host it on
haskell.org, or
just start it by myself using a
non-Haskell.org
mailing
list service? Also, how should I have it
listed
in the
"www.haskell.org Mailing Lists"
(http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo)
page for
the
benefit of other members of the Haskell
community?
Thank you very much for your time and
cooperation.
Sincerely yours,
Benjamin L. Russell
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