@Andrew: > This probably works quite well for mainstream programming languages > (since they're all so similar), but is unlikely to work at all for > Haskell (since, as far as I know, no other programming language on Earth > is remotely like it - Miranda excluded). Even Lisp and Erland are > nothing like Haskell, and they're supposedly based on the same ideas.
I didnt know this when I _started_ :) So, thats why I am learning Haskell in exclusion. > > Not a bad way to learn to use a tool. You might want to stick to things > that involve simple I/O and complex processing rather than the other way > round though. ;-) (For example, I wrote a program that renders an > animation of the solutions of a simple differential equation by > numerical integration. The math is complex; the I/O just involves > dumping millions of numbers into a big text file.) > Yes, as someone pointed out, Haskell was meant for a lot of computation, and IO is just a part of the story! > For the longest time I couldn't remember whether it's "monad" or > "monand"... but anyway, yeah, it's a common problem. It's not actually > complicated ones you understand it; it's just that it's so abstract that > it's hard to explain. It's a bit like trying to explain to somebody what > a "magnet" is... it's not a complex concept, just hard to describe. > But, being a computer science student, I think I need to look into it too! I like the quote found on this site: http://patryshev.com/monad/m-intro.html <quote> Monads in programming seem to be the most mysterious notion of the century. I find two reasons for this: * lack of familiarity with category theory; * many authors carefully bypass any mention of categories. It's like talking about electricity without using calculus. Good enough to replace a fuse, not good enough to design an amplifier. </quote> > > > > I'm a maths nerd. To me, Haskell looks like an advanced term-rewrite > system similar to Mathematica. It was quite easy to learn the basics. > What took longer was learning to approach problems in the right way. The > way you'd do things in an object oriented language is usually NOT the > way you'd do it in Haskell. (Unless you enjoy making your life hard...) > Unfortunately, that's all practice. > Ah, I am not familiar with the "term-rewrite" you are talking about. I will Google it up then. Thanks :) ======================================================================== _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe