Robin Green wrote:
Whilst localising IO to a small part of the program is generally a good idea, beginners should not be scared off by the thought that IO in Haskell is so hard it has to be covered on page 94. This is not the case. It should be introduced on page 1.
As a newbie... I'll agree with Robin. I /did/ think that IO in Haskell was probably very difficult because it's covered in page 94. I skimmed through YAHT and IO is covered waaaayyy deep into the document. I haven't read that section yet, but there is a lot of content and to me it looked like it must be something difficult. I guess/hope that when I get around to reading it I'll find out that it's not as scary as it looks.
If people want Haskell to be treated as a practical language, not just something for doing academic teaching and research with, it should be taught as a practical language - which means that things like IO and space/time usage come to the forefront.
Until recently I thought of Haskell as something you would use for Calculus and the like. It seemed like a tool for academia. You may be interested to know that one of the reasons I started looking at Haskell just now was to help a friend understand Calculus (the other reason is that Haskell looks very cool). Cheers, Daniel. -- /\/`) http://oooauthors.org /\/_/ http://opendocumentfellowship.org /\/_/ \/_/ I am not over-weight, I am under-tall. /