Beginners Guide to Haskell?

wvdschel_2018 0
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I've been looking for a decent guide to Haskell for some time, but haven't been able to find one that seems interesting enough to read through and/or makes sense.

I've had prior exposure to Haskell a few years back, but I can't remember much about it. I remember the "Aha!"-feeling was incredible when I finally got it, and it was actually fun to play with, so I'm looking to rediscover the lost art of Haskell.

I'm familiar with Ruby and its functional programming tricks, so I think I'm not completely in the dark. Any links?

functional-programming haskell
16 Answers
Don-Duong_Quach_1397130
Pascal_13110

If you're like me, and like videos of presentations, than this is a good tutorial:

A Taste of Haskell

It's a three-hour tutorial, that uses xmonad as a running example to explain Haskell to experienced (imperative) programmers. The presentation is given by Simon Peyton-Jones who, besides being one of the top Haskell designers, is also a great speaker.

user_25970

Once you get past the beginning stages, I would highly recommend reading Real World Haskell.

user_6110

The Haskell wikibook which includes the text from the great tutorial Yet Another Haskell Tutorial.

(The "Generic Haskell User Guide" paper is a fine paper, but I think it is a particularly bad recommendation for a beginning Haskell programmer, as it is more of an academic paper presenting extensions to Haskell and basically a different language "Generic Haskell" (i.e. Haskell with an old version of Generics) instead of standard Haskell 98. <irony>If you were looking for dense reading about Haskell, start with the Haskell 98 report.</irony>)

user_25430
user_92820

Yet Another Haskell Tutorial (PDF) worked for me.

Edit: Updike points out that the text of YAHT has been folded into the Haksell Wikibooks. The PDF is still useful if you (like me) prefer to print out and read on paper.

BTW I have also read A Gentle Introduction To Haskell (also available as PDF). I will definitely not recommend this for beginners. It is only gentle compared to the Haskell Report. However it is a good reference when you have a solid understanding of the language.

user_74880
user_41770
unclerojelio_547570
user_497670

Strange that nobody suggested Real World Haskell. That's IMHO the best Haskell book you currently can get you can get it for on or offline reading.

Friedrich_150680

One thing that is really unique about Haskell is that there is a mailing list exactly for beginners. Go to Haskell-Beginners.

Reading books is good, but having some humans to ask is always a great resource, too. Together, I think there is absolutely no reason to say "Haskell is hard to learn because there's no material on it."

You might also want to visit #haskell at irc.freenode.net.

user_117970
Kevin_Goff_19400
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