On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 12:40 -0500, Lanny Ripple wrote: > Derek Elkins wrote: > > What people need to do is stop reading two page blog posts by someone > > who's "just got" monads and read the well-written peer-reviewed papers > > I have taught many people to program in group settings and > individually in my career. I have referred them to many > tutorials. I have used many examples from tutorials I thought > were useful. I can't recall a single time I've ever turned to a > beginner and said, "And you really should brush up on the > peer-reviewed papers to learn this part."
How about a book? You've never recommended a book? But even so, where did I say tutorial? The -are- good monad tutorials, they are just horribly out-weighed by bad ones. Further, having a tutorial as supplement to person-to-person education is totally different from trying to learn purely from tutorials. Also, what is wrong with papers or recommending them? Finally, how often have you been part of a community where the primary mode of documentation is a research paper... > > > by the people who clearly know what they are talking about. Luckily, > > for monads applied to Haskell we have Wadler, a witty, enjoyable and > > clear writer/speaker. All of Wadler's monad "introductions" are > > readable by anyone with a basic grasp of Haskell. You certainly don't > > need to be even remotely an academic to understand them. I'm willing to > > bet that many people who say they don't understand monads and have read > > "every tutorial about them" haven't read -any- of Wadler's papers. > I'm confused. Are you praising Wadler or bashing the tutorials > (or both)? *I* was carping about the tutorials (and even > mentioned that Wadler was my breakthrough) so I suspect we are in > violent agreement. I'm praising Wadler and bashing the good majority of monad tutorials, but not all of them. Mostly I'm pointing out an unreasonable aversion to reading papers, as if a paper couldn't possibly be understandable. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
