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I barely know the basics of Haskell and this is very easy to understand. This is supposed to show you which tools you should use, how to organize and publish y

by DasIch 16y ago

I barely know the basics of Haskell and this is very easy to understand. This is supposed to show you which tools you should use, how to organize and publish your project. This tutorials does this quite well. If you want to learn Haskell read http://learnyouahaskell.com http://learnyouahaskell.com or something similar, it explains the language and how to build a simple program using GHC, if you do anything more advanced you should start reading the documentation of your compiler anyway.

davidw 16y ago
I deleted my comment because I couldn't get the tone quite right. The gist of it was that this article reflects a certain mentality... along the lines of starting to learn how to drive by reading about the physics of internal combustion engines. That's hyperbole and the article clearly doesn't go that far, but it seems to be a bit neither here nor there; it's not a tutorial like 'learnyouahaskell' nor is it simply a reference for useful haskell tools.
- ionfish 16y ago
  It's an overview of the process of writing a program, covering program and file system structure, build tools, libraries, testing, and revision control. It's not "simply a reference for useful haskell tools" because it has a normative aspect: it says, "This is the way things should be done." It's the document to read when you understand the language well enough to write something larger than a single file solving a Project Euler problem, and want to know what the best practices are in writing a library or executable that could be—for example—published on Hackage or used in production. And while it's not perfect in its presentation, it actually does a pretty good job of what it sets out to do; it was certainly helpful to me when I was in that situation.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- giladvdn 16y ago
  I agree. I don't know Haskell but this guide sure turned me off of it. They seem to try and do their best at showing the most complicated and unappealing aspects of the language. Even the basic HelloWorld program demonstrated is weird and long and I get the feeling that Haskell is convoluted and not worth it.
  - kscaldef 16y ago
    long? There's 1 import statement, 1 optional type declaration, and 2 lines of code. It could be just the import and 1 line of code, but that would violate 2 Haskell best practices: include explicit type declarations for your public interface, and separate pure and impure functionality. Honestly, if the intent were to be pedagogical in this specific regard (which is isn't), I would say that the example is unnecessarily terse (which is why you describe it as "weird").
  - davidw 16y ago
    I wouldn't judge Haskell by this guide. It just made me smile a bit as it seemed to put the cart before the horse, as well as the guy who made the cart, and the people who made the road.
    - ionfish 16y ago
      I'm a bit baffled by this response. If you go to the front page of haskell.org there is a 'Learn Haskell' section with six links. This is not one of them. Nowhere in the article does it claim to be a beginner's guide to Haskell. It doesn't make the mistake you attribute to it; this is entirely a projection on your and others' part.
      - davidw 16y ago
        Why do you think I'd make that projection from an article called "How to write a Haskell program"? The title has two meanings, and you are seeing "how a Haskell program ought to be written", whereas other people are seeing it as a tutorial that explains... well, "how to write a Haskell program". And there are definitely some steps in there, it's not merely a set of guidelines. So I think the second interpretation is not entirely unexpected, since the link goes directly to it with no explanation for those of us who are not familiar with Haskell, rather than, as you say, to the front page of Haskell's site. That's where I'm getting the "neither here nor there" from. I have no axe to grind with Haskell, and indeed counseled the other poster to not be put off by what he (and I) mistakenly thought was a poorly done tutorial.
- scott_s 16y ago
  The tutorial is valuable, I think, it's just that the title implies it's something else. The value in the tutorial is that it lays out the standard way to organize a Haskell project that you plan on sharing with other people in the Haskell community. It's not, as the title implies, a tutorial on writing in Haskell.
- tel 16y ago
  It's more like learning how to take care of your car based on common habits of owners of well-maintained cars. The guide doesn't even sort of mention how to think/create using Haskell. It also doesn't even sort of dive into real Haskell magic like how Hindley-Milner type systems work. It's tangential to both.

by DasIch 16y ago

davidw 16y ago

I deleted my comment because I couldn't get the tone quite right. The gist of it was that this article reflects a certain mentality... along the lines of starting to learn how to drive by reading about the physics of internal combustion engines. That's hyperbole and the article clearly doesn't go that far, but it seems to be a bit neither here nor there; it's not a tutorial like 'learnyouahaskell' nor is it simply a reference for useful haskell tools.

ionfish 16y ago
It's an overview of the process of writing a program, covering program and file system structure, build tools, libraries, testing, and revision control. It's not "simply a reference for useful haskell tools" because it has a normative aspect: it says, "This is the way things should be done." It's the document to read when you understand the language well enough to write something larger than a single file solving a Project Euler problem, and want to know what the best practices are in writing a library or executable that could be—for example—published on Hackage or used in production. And while it's not perfect in its presentation, it actually does a pretty good job of what it sets out to do; it was certainly helpful to me when I was in that situation.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
giladvdn 16y ago
I agree. I don't know Haskell but this guide sure turned me off of it. They seem to try and do their best at showing the most complicated and unappealing aspects of the language. Even the basic HelloWorld program demonstrated is weird and long and I get the feeling that Haskell is convoluted and not worth it.
- kscaldef 16y ago
  long? There's 1 import statement, 1 optional type declaration, and 2 lines of code. It could be just the import and 1 line of code, but that would violate 2 Haskell best practices: include explicit type declarations for your public interface, and separate pure and impure functionality. Honestly, if the intent were to be pedagogical in this specific regard (which is isn't), I would say that the example is unnecessarily terse (which is why you describe it as "weird").
- davidw 16y ago
  I wouldn't judge Haskell by this guide. It just made me smile a bit as it seemed to put the cart before the horse, as well as the guy who made the cart, and the people who made the road.
  - ionfish 16y ago
    I'm a bit baffled by this response. If you go to the front page of haskell.org there is a 'Learn Haskell' section with six links. This is not one of them. Nowhere in the article does it claim to be a beginner's guide to Haskell. It doesn't make the mistake you attribute to it; this is entirely a projection on your and others' part.
    - davidw 16y ago
      Why do you think I'd make that projection from an article called "How to write a Haskell program"? The title has two meanings, and you are seeing "how a Haskell program ought to be written", whereas other people are seeing it as a tutorial that explains... well, "how to write a Haskell program". And there are definitely some steps in there, it's not merely a set of guidelines. So I think the second interpretation is not entirely unexpected, since the link goes directly to it with no explanation for those of us who are not familiar with Haskell, rather than, as you say, to the front page of Haskell's site. That's where I'm getting the "neither here nor there" from. I have no axe to grind with Haskell, and indeed counseled the other poster to not be put off by what he (and I) mistakenly thought was a poorly done tutorial.
scott_s 16y ago
The tutorial is valuable, I think, it's just that the title implies it's something else. The value in the tutorial is that it lays out the standard way to organize a Haskell project that you plan on sharing with other people in the Haskell community. It's not, as the title implies, a tutorial on writing in Haskell.
tel 16y ago
It's more like learning how to take care of your car based on common habits of owners of well-maintained cars. The guide doesn't even sort of mention how to think/create using Haskell. It also doesn't even sort of dive into real Haskell magic like how Hindley-Milner type systems work. It's tangential to both.