Jonathan Cast wrote:
Newcomers flounder because they expect to keep programming the same way they always have.
_Some_ newcommers flounder because they expect Haskell to be just another VB / C++ / Java / whatever. (Do we really want to encourage these people to be learning Haskell in the first place?) Others it seems flounder simply because Haskell completely changes almost all the rules about programming, and they end up not knowing which way is up. I have far more sympathy with these latter people. As I say, teaching the language syntax and the standard library functions it's going to help much on its own. You need to give these people some idea of what the high-level game plan is. I think you need to show people that you can use Haskell to do normal, ordinary stuff before you start showing off the more exotic things. (Obviously, you need to choose your examples carefully. Anything moderately complex is probably going to be approached from a totally different angle in Haskell, so the parallel won't be as helpful.)