If you teach them about how operators are normal functions in Haskell, using an operator to index into an array makes the indexing operation less magical—a big pedagogical boon, in my view. The fewer special cases in the language you're teaching, the better, and looking similar to other languages is not a good reason for a special case.

Especially since the similarity could be misleading!)

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:48 PM, <ok@cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:

> I'm a part time tutor even though I don't look Elizabethan
>
> I was trying to lower the learning curve for students

Using square brackets for array indexing in Haskell
would be more a case of putting a stumbling block in
their way than lowering the learning curve.

Fortran uses A(I), not A[I], and has for the last fifty-some
years. The official definition of Simula 67 uses A(I) as
well, despite its predecessor Algol 60 using a[i]. COBOL
uses A(I), and has done so nearly as long as Fortran. PL/I
(yes, it still exists) uses A(I), not A[I]. BASIC uses
A(I), this is still so in Visual Basic.NET. If memory
serves me correctly, MINITAB uses parentheses, not brackets.

Is a pattern beginning to emerge?

Lying to the students by implicitly telling them "all programming
languages use square brackets for array indexing" will be doing
them no favour. Even lying about Haskell is no kindness.

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