Learning about Programming Languages (specifically Haskell)
Dear Friends, I'm looking for some help from the Haskell community. I hope this is the right place to ask for information. I'm putting together a website aimed at high school students and teachers, and would like to add a few paragraphs to the following page: http://programming.dojo.net.nz/languages/haskell/index ... explaining why one would want to learn Haskell. I don't know the answer to this since I don't use Haskell extensively. What are the main application areas and how is it useful? Any other suggestions or ideas for the Haskell page would be fantastic, and any suggestions to other pages in general is also very helpful. http://programming.dojo.net.nz/ Kind regards, Samuel
Hi Samuel I'm not sure Haskell is an ideal language for school age teaching, DrScheme seems a more obvious choice. Paul Hudak made a good case for Haskell as a learning language with his School of Expression book, but if you weren't directly following that book, I think it would be hard to make the teaching fun (which I'd expect to be the major battle for teaching kids). Obvious problems - cryptic error messages, hiatus from graphics / multimedia, lack of a text book (if not using School of Expression)... That said, there were some nice slides from John Peterson about teaching summer school mathematics where Haskell was used 'under the hood' to create music or draw pictures. The students certainly weren't exposed to full Haskell - just a very small core that was largely familiar from maths, plus specific functions to compose pictures / music. Best wishes Stephen
Dear Stephen, The goal of the site is not an introduction to programming for the beginner. Its a site designed to expose students and teachers to the multitudes of programming languages out there. DrScheme looks like a good approach. Kind regards, Samuel On 4/05/2010, at 4:03 AM, Stephen Tetley wrote:
Hi Samuel
I'm not sure Haskell is an ideal language for school age teaching, DrScheme seems a more obvious choice.
Paul Hudak made a good case for Haskell as a learning language with his School of Expression book, but if you weren't directly following that book, I think it would be hard to make the teaching fun (which I'd expect to be the major battle for teaching kids). Obvious problems - cryptic error messages, hiatus from graphics / multimedia, lack of a text book (if not using School of Expression)...
That said, there were some nice slides from John Peterson about teaching summer school mathematics where Haskell was used 'under the hood' to create music or draw pictures. The students certainly weren't exposed to full Haskell - just a very small core that was largely familiar from maths, plus specific functions to compose pictures / music.
Best wishes
Stephen _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
participants (2)
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Samuel Williams -
Stephen Tetley