Jules,
Hint: Don't put signatures on functions, then. Instead, let the compiler infer the type for you! If you want to know what the type is, ask GHCi with :info. And if you think it is helpful documentation, you can copy-paste the correct signature from ghci into your source code!
Although in this specific case you might be right, I'm not too sure if I agree with you. Especially for newbies, writing signatures upfront can be good practice. First, it lets you think about *what* you are going to write before you actually write it. That way, it really forces structure on the way one codes, and lack of structure is what usually makes learning a new language harder. Second, it gives you a way to test whether what you write is what you intended to write. Although the example is a bit contrived, I recently saw a piece of code written by a relative newbie for selecting the last element of a list: last (x : xs : y) = y If she had written a type signature for this function, the compiler would have flagged this an error. Admittedly, sometimes type signatures can get too intimidating for novice Haskellers. Think about polymorphism and type classes. But, well, one typically gets exposed to polymorphism quite soon, so that should be doable, while it's possible to stay ignorant of type classes for quite some while (if it weren't for those nasty error messages). Just my two cents. Regards, Stefan