Hi,
On the contrary, I think it's an excellent way of learning Haskell. I'm writing a lot of useful Haskell code with only one IO action (interact). I don't think I could reasonably construct an introductory problem that couldn't be solved with it, and I haven't yet found an application for which I've needed more. I think it's destructive to teach people "we have a wonderful new paradigm of programming that solves all sorts of problems, but all we're going to use it for is doing what we did with C++ anyway".
Yes, but the point is most students have already been poisoned with C++ (or Java). They don't see the point in Haskell becuase they can't see the wood for the trees. The only way to get them interested in Haskell in the first place is to make it look vaguely like C++ (or Java) -- it's like coercing a Donkey with a carrot. Once they are interested - show them there is a lot more to Haskell than imperative-style behaviour, that way they may also see the elegence of purely functional programming.
That's just my 2ยข -- I like Haskell specifically because I don't have to do things in order and I don't have to do things in an imperative style, I would love for more people to be taught about this wonderful thing.
So would I. But in reality it just doesn't seem to work like that. Chris.