On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Richard Kelsall wrote:
A tip for people explaining Haskell to beginners:
The acts of reading and speaking are closely integrated in the brain. When I am unable to 'say' something it is much more difficult to 'read' and absorb the text. There appears to be a misconception that it somehow helps beginners to understand things if they are not told how to 'say' these strange new symbols. Certainly for me, and I would guess for most people, this idea is completely wrong. When I 'read' a new operator such as >>= I want know how to 'say' it.
'>>=' is spoken "bind"
I don't mean that posts on Haskell-Cafe should do this, but books and articles aimed at people who haven't used Haskell before should always vocalize the symbols as soon as they are introduced.
On a related note, if there isn't already, it would be nice to have a page in the wiki that gives good ways of vocalizing the operators and vocalizing them in simple code snippets. I might get round to doing this sometime, maybe just a table something like this :
Got idea, please go ahead! I suggest categories "Style" or "Syntax".
Operator Formal Informal -------- ------ -------- :: has type -> maps to to example f :: Int -> Int f has type Int to Int
Is a symbol-by-symbol translation sensible? What about "f maps from Int to Int", "plus maps Int to a function, which maps Int to Int"