peterson / lets-haskell

An introductory course on Haskell and functional programming

Let's Haskell

Written by David Peterson

Introduction

Getting Help

There are two mailing lists for asking questions. All questions are welcome, however, your first post might be moderated. This is simply to prevent spam.

1. #haskell-beginners on Freenode is an IRC channel that is operated by others who are keen to share ideas relating to functional programming in Haskell. They are in various timezones and share a passion for functional programming, so may be able to provide relatively quick assistance with questions.

Getting Started

1. Install the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). Version 7.8 or higher is recommended.

2. Change to the directory containing this document.

3. Execute the command ghci, which will compile and load all the source code. You may need to set permissions on a file, chmod 600 .ghci.

4. Inspect the modules to get a feel for Haskell's syntax, then move on to the exercises starting with Lets.Data.Basics. The Progression section of this document lists the recommended order in which to attempt the exercises.

5. Edit a source file to a proposed solution to an exercise. At the ghci prompt, issue the command :reload. This will compile your solution and reload it in the GHC interpreter. You may use :r for short.

Progression

It is recommended to perform some exercises before others. The following progression is recommended:

Day 1:

• Lets.Go - ops, basic types, to/from digits, div, mod, min, max ... etc.
• Lets.Function
• Lets.List
• Lets.Data
• Lets.TouchFeelyFuzzy - a warm-up exercise for functors, applicatives, etc.
• Lets.Functor - functors, applicatives and monads.
• (more) coming soon ...

Day 2:

• coming soon ...

Day 3:

• coming soon ...

Answers to the exercises can be found on the answers branch, here: https://github.com/peterson/lets-data/tree/answers

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Tony Morris (and co-contributors) for the NICTA course, which provides both the template and the motivation for this course.

References

• CIS 194 Spring '13 - Brent Yorgey's excellent introductory Haskell course, which covers many of the same topics in this tutorial in greater detail.

• NICTA Course - A foundational course on functional programming concepts using Haskell.

• Learn You a Haskell - An approachable textbook covering the basics of Haskell.

• Real World Haskell - Textbook covering both beginner and advanced topics in Haskell.

• Glasgow Haskell Compiler