No, that book is not outdated. Can you give an example of what's not working for you? On 9/6/07, Chris Saunders wrote:

I wish to learn Haskell. I purchased a book – An Introduction to Functional Programming Systems Using Haskell but I think this might be too outdated. I'm using GHC and it seems that some of the functions used in the book are no longer a part of Haskell. I'm looking for advice on books or tutorials that might be more up to date.

So far I'm finding Haskell difficult – I may be too thick.

Regards

Chris Saunders _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

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On 9/6/07, Chris Saunders wrote:

So far I'm finding Haskell difficult – I may be too thick.

Once upon a time there was a young man who wanted to be a race car driver. He bought an old, junky car with a souped-up engine (after all, that's what all his friends were using). It didn't go very fast, but it was easy enough to drive. It did have its quirks, of course -- in order to start it you had to be parked on an uphill slope, turn the steering wheel three-quarters to the right, and jiggle the key in a certain way; it would also stall every time you shifted from second into third gear, unless you simultaneously put your foot on the brake and turned on the hazard lights; not to mention how the windshield wipers came on every time you used the left turn signal. But he actually got pretty good at driving it. He and his friends would race around the block and in empty parking lots. Then one day he met someone else who said she was also a race car driver, but her car was different -- she called it a "Haskar". It had a top speed of 400 miles per hour, no steering wheel (you just lean whichever way you want to go, she said), and a frictionless, silent magnetic engine. Even more strangely, you could get one for free! This sounded too good to be true, and naturally the young man wanted to try it out. So he got his very own Haskar, and entered a race that the woman recommended to him. The Haskar race took place on a real racetrack with banked curves, cheering fans, and officials with colored flags. The man came in last. "Gosh," he thought. "I always used to beat my friends when we raced around the block, but this Haskar thing is pretty tough to drive. I guess I'm just an innately bad race car driver." ------ OK, I like making up stories and analogies, I hope you'll humor me. =) The point, of course, is that finding Haskell difficult is completely normal, because Haskell directly exposes you to fundamental issues in logic, computation, type systems, and so on, which are themselves difficult. It doesn't mean you're too thick. Stick with it -- it may be difficult, but in time you'll become more comfortable with Haskell, and learn a lot of other things besides. And hopefully you'll have some fun, too. =) This list is a great place to ask questions, and you'll find that the #haskell channel on irc.freenode.net is a great place to hang out, ask questions, and learn things as well. (Think of it as that bar where all the drivers go to relax between races. =) -Brent