re: Biggest Haskell unit in the world

A couple of years ago, we (University of Texas at Austin) had 300+ students per semester learning Haskell in our first course for CS majors. The departure of several lecturers gave the forces of mediocrity the opening they'd been waiting for, and last year all sections of the class were taught in Scheme. Next year the slide continues, as most sections will be taught in Java (!). Of course I hope this setback is only temporary, and the impressive numbers from Down Under will help to counter the argument that Haskell is too challenging for ordinary students (this, just as we're improving our average student by instituting a CS admissions filter!). The best strategy for the long term seems to be to educate our faculty, and a few of the theoreticians have seen the light. From time to time, I put on short Haskell tutorials for faculty and grad students, but attendance has always been less than half a dozen, and has never included the folks who make the curricular decisions. If any of you antipodeans feel like sharing tales of Haskellisation, I can guarantee you an eager audience of at least 1. Cheers, --Ham At 6:47 AM -0500 6/25/01, Manuel M. T. Chakravarty wrote:

Bernard James POPE wrote,

...

Lyndon While writes:

...

So how about it? Can anyone beat 298 for a Haskell programming unit? For the record, I teach more advanced aspects of FP to (this year) 38 students, too.

Sorry Lyndon, we (melbourne uni) had 767 students sit our first year subject which teaches Haskell. We teach it again in second semester too, with over a hundred students.

Computing 1A (taught in Haskell) at Uni of New South Wales has two streams with 731 + 247 students (the second stream is for good students who want some more challenge). In second semester, we have about 600 students in that course.

Lyndon While wrote,

...

Maybe together we can make Australia the most Haskellised country in the world!

We stand a good chance, I would say.

Cheers, Manuel

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