S Koray Can wrote:
As a newbie... I agree that a newbie should be able to write this
fairly early on:
main = do
x <- getLine()
putStrLn ("The answer is " ++ show(fib(read(x))))
I'd agree for some definition of 'early'. I'll elaborate:
[snip]
The above code snippet contains typeclasses (show, read, monadic IO,
lists), syntactic sugar (do, <-). When you say a 'newbie' should be able
to write that early on, I'd interpret that as 'a newbie should be able
to regurgitate this early on'
Well, I'm a newbie, and I wrote it. I have "enough" understanding to
generate that code, even if I don't understand it all. This is what I know:
* x is a string, fib wants an int, and "read" turns a string into a number.
* "The answer is " is a string so you need ++. ++ expects a string, and
"show" turns a number into a string.
So, yes, I need *basic* knowledge of types (strings vs numbers) and the
functions that convert from one to the other. But that's it. I don't
need to know that "do" and "<-" are syntactics sugar, or what a monad is
(heck, I don't know those things).
I think that the following is suitable for chapter 1:
--//--
main = do
putStrLn "What is your name? "
name <- getLine
putStrLn("Hello " ++ name)
--//--
You don't need to learn about monads, or classes or lists for this. Yes,
not even lists ("Use ++ to catenate strings"). All you need to know is
strings, and that "name <- getLine" gets a line from input and puts it
in 'name'.
I think that this is suitable for chapter 2:
--//--
main = do
putStrLn "Please type a word:"
word <- getLine
putStrLn("This word has " ++ (show( length word)) ++ " letters")
--//--
Here you learn about numbers, and converting numbers to strings (show).
And this is for chapter 3:
--//--
main = do
putStrLn "Please type a number:"
number <- getLine
putStrLn (number ++ "! = " ++ (show (fac read(number)))
--//--
Here you learn about converting a string to number. At some point
between chapters 1 and 3 you'd learn how to write 'fac' (I guess chapter 1).
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
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