On 2006-01-26, John Hughes
I don't think it's hard. I would just teach students to define functions with =, and "variables" with :=. I tell my students to write type signatures at the beginning anyway, so they don't risk being bitten by the M-R anyway. Beginning students just do what you tell them, and they already think of function and variable definitions as different. Learning a different syntax for one of them would not be a problem.
Once they've mastered basic programming and start getting interested in things like overloading, then you have to explain how the M-R works. I'd much rather explain =/:= than try to teach them how you know whether a definition is shared or not right now.
And this gets back to "what the target audience for Haskell' is" question. Since I'm not a CS student, and I'm not teaching CS students, this whole argument is rather unconvincing to me. -- Aaron Denney -><-