Dear Simon, I was always impressed by Haskell, but my "aha" moment was when I realised how great it is as a scripting language. How cool is the fact that you can glue together a bunch of small programs and make a bigger program out of it without toil? Haskell helps you get mundane tasks done while being a pleasure to write (in relative terms)! There are much better examples online—I love Gabriel Gonzalez' turtle library—but I find the following compelling enough, and anybody can understand more or less what is going on with some explanation: #!/usr/bin/env stack -- stack script --resolver lts-10.1 --install-ghc {-# LANGUAGE TypeApplications #-} import Data.Maybe (mapMaybe) import Text.Read (readMaybe) main :: IO () main = interact ( show @Double . sum . mapMaybe readMaybe . words ) -- Adapted from a script by Taylor Fausak: https://gist.github.com/tfausak/fcd11dfcec616622033dfb64eb2378e1 Good luck with the presentation! Best, Vilem