Miran Lipovača

Haskell reinvigorated my love for programming, lifting it up a meta-level and forcing me to reevaluate the way I look at the world.

This is a re-read, although it's a been a few years. Actually, those years seem to have rather helped. Last time I around, I was reading through and everything made a lot of sense (I have a strong background in functional programming, so it wasn't new here). And then I hit monads and side effects and everything went bizarre.

This time around? Well, everything still went sideways, but in a way that made sense?


moveKnight :: KnightPos -> [KnightPos]
moveKnight (c,r) = do
⠀⠀⠀⠀(c',r') show more ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀,(c 1,r-2),(c 1,r 2),(c-1,r-2),(c-1,r 2)
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀]
⠀⠀⠀⠀guard (c' `elem` [1..8] && r' `elem` [1..8])
⠀⠀⠀⠀return (c',r')


Sure.

In any case, if you're into programming, particularly functional programming, you should give Haskell a chance. It probably won't become your default goto language, but it might just give you a new way to think, which is always worthwhile. And [b:Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!|6593810|Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!|Miran Lipovača|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1294497489l/6593810._SX50_.jpg|6787531] is a great way to do that. It's well written and funny, bringing you through at least enough of the language to decide just how much more you want to dive in.

I think the primary thing missing is any solid, practical real world examples. Mathematical tricks and trivial problems are all well and good, but if that's all you can write in a language, you're not going to be doing much with it.

Still worth a read. show less

Technically I'm still reading this (I've skimmed the last 4 chapters or so, but keep going back to review them more closely). That said, I don't hesitate to say that anyone planning to learn Haskell absolutely must start with this book. It easily provides the most direct and clear explanations I've seen for both Haskell and functional programming in general.

This book's opening chapters are poorly organized for actually teaching the language and programming paradigm. It basically seems a bit more like kindergarten show-and-tell than a book about programming, without any significant approach to meaningful principles of Haskell or functional programming. I did not find it worth my time at all, and quickly switched to reading a different Haskell book.

I recommend Graham Hutton's Programming In Haskell. It's much better.