RE: [Haskell-cafe] First steps in Haskell
Daniel is right, by definition. He is a new user. He had difficulty. That much is incontrovertible. While he may seem unusual, perhaps he is only unusual in that he's told us about his experience rather than trying Perl instead. For which, much thanks, Daniel! In any case, I think it'd be great if he, or anyone else, started a Wiki page on "very first steps in Haskell", along the lines he suggests. Maybe one exists already? Once it does, it'd be good to point to it from haskell.org. Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Wolfgang Jeltsch | Sent: 19 December 2005 09:50 | To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org | Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] First steps in Haskell | | Am Sonntag, 18. Dezember 2005 17:25 schrieb Daniel Carrera: | > [...] | | > This is a real problem for Haskell. I expect that a lot of people try | > Haskell and give up because they can't even write the simplest function. | | Hello Daniel, | | honestly, I have to say that during my years with Haskell, this seems to be | the first time that I see somebody trying to enter a Haskell program via the | command line of an interactive environment. So I suppose that it's not "a | lot of people" who experience the problems you do. | | > It's hard not to be put off by this. I love the theory behind Haskell, | > but the practice of it seems to be a real problem. | | Did you have a look at the Hugs or GHCi documentation? I'm very sure, it will | tell you that what you may enter at the command line are (merely) expressions | to evaluate and special commands like :t for displaying the type of an | expression, and that the Haskell declarations (normally) have to be read from | a file. | | > I hope someone will show me how to make this program work. Even better, | > I hope someone will fix the compilers and interpreters if they need | > fixing, or fix the documentation if that's what needs fixing. | | I suppose that neither the compilers and interpreters nor the documentation | need(s) fixing, although I might be wrong with the documentation. | | > Best, | > Daniel. | | Best wishes, | Wolfgang | _______________________________________________ | Haskell-Cafe mailing list | Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Simon P-J:
Daniel is right, by definition. He is a new user. He had difficulty. That much is incontrovertible.
While he may seem unusual, perhaps he is only unusual in that he's told us about his experience rather than trying Perl instead. For which, much thanks, Daniel!
Actually, I have sometimes wished that the various interactive Haskell interfaces had the possibility to enter also declarations interactively, as Daniel originally asked for. Lisp interpreters often support this to some extent, so it is not out of line for a newcomer to expect it also for Haskell. I often use hugs as a calculator, and sometimes it would be very convenient to be able to make one or a few short declarations while making some interactive calculations. It can be quite tedious to create and edit a source code file on the side and then load it, when all you want is a short declaration or two. Would it be that complex to have an interactive interface enter a "declarations mode" when it sees a declaration coming, and then let it create, compile and load a temporary module when the declaration is finished? Björn Lisper
"Simon Peyton-Jones"
In any case, I think it'd be great if he, or anyone else, started a Wiki page on "very first steps in Haskell", along the lines he suggests. Maybe one exists already? Once it does, it'd be good to point to it from haskell.org.
There's both HaskellNewbie[1] and HaskellDemo[2]. It would be nice if they were linked from the front page of haskell.org. Has there been any discussion about keeping the haskell.org pages in a darcs repository for easy local editing? http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellNewbie http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellDemo -- Shae Matijs Erisson - http://www.ScannedInAvian.com/ - Sockmonster once said: You could switch out the unicycles for badgers, and the game would be the same.
participants (3)
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Bjorn Lisper -
Shae Matijs Erisson -
Simon Peyton-Jones