Paul Hudak wrote:
Unforunately, the "Gentle Introduction To Haskell" that haskell.org links to is not a very useful introduction.
John and I should probably rename this document, since it really isn't a very gentle intro at all. We should probably also downplay it's prominance on the haskell website. It was written rather quickly many years ago, at a time when there was not a single textbook on Haskell. So it's probably outlived it's purpose, although I do believe that some people still find it useful.
I think Paul is being unduly modest. I found it very useful when I first learnt Haskell. But I did already know ML, so maybe the "Gentle Introduction" would be harder going for someone who didn't know anything about functional programming. Nevertheless I think it might be a mistake to downplay it unless there's a better publicly-available introduction with which you can replace it. The introduction states quite clearly that
Our goal is to provide a gentle introduction to Haskell for someone who has experience with at least one other language, preferably a functional language (even if only an "almost-functional" language such as ML or Scheme). and then goes on to recommend a couple of texts giving more detailed introductions to functional programming. I don't think one can ask for more.