The slides are admittedly fairly obtuse, with very little context. Presumably there's an accompanying talk we are missing. Haskell is really not alien. The stu

The slides are admittedly fairly obtuse, with very little context. Presumably there's an accompanying talk we are missing. Haskell is really not alien. The stuff that usually comes up, such as discussions about monads, make the language seem weirder and more esoteric than it really is. The base language, if you disregard the more advanced, complicated topics (for example, the mathematical basis for monads), is very straightforward, although some of the concepts (typeclasses, lazy evaluation, partial application/currying) can seem very novel and strange and daunting if you are not used to ML-based languages. I was not, and I had no problem grasping the basics, although I am still not fluent in the more complicated monad-based stuff. The best intro, by far, is Learn You A Haskell For Great Good! [1]. It starts very gently, and is tailored to people who are more familiar with current imperative languages. [1] http://learnyouahaskell.com/ http://learnyouahaskell.com/