Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
Daniel Carrera schrieb: I think it largely depends on the learner. Some people find vocabulary easier, or more interesting, others not. I have a hard time learning a lot of isolated facts (e.g. vocabulary), but I find it easier and more enjoyable to learn a rule that I can apply many times. But I know people who are the exact opposite. I wouldn't want to make an absolute rule. Or like a local physics prof likes to put it: “I guess you all have an idea of Ohm's law? Or wait, right, for the medics being with us, here are the three Ohm's laws: U = RI, R = U/I, and I= U/R.” Kalman ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
Bryan O'Sullivan wrote: Jason Dagit wrote: While I'm thinking out loud, it would be very cool if someone wrote some articles, say for the monad reader, that follow the formula of the Effective C++ books. The last couple of times I've wanted a book like that, I wrote the book myself. It's a very effective way to get the book you want, compared to wishing. There is of course the dilemma that writing such a book requires a thorough understanding of the subject matter, which one intends to acquire by reading the book in the first place. I see a _|_ lurking there. :) Regards, apfelmus -- http://apfelmus.nfshost.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
Jason Dagit wrote: Looking over Real-World haskell I see that some of these topics are discussed, which is really good. In particular, Chapter 25 would be valuable to anyone trying to find space leaks. There you discuss reduction to normal form, for example, and some strictness issues and how to control evaluation. For some time now, I have this theory that confusion about space leaks can often be attributed to people not being informed about the evaluation model. They simply don't know what's going on; they only know that it's got something to do with these thunks. Is that an accurate description? Regards, apfelmus -- http://apfelmus.nfshost.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
Chris Forno (jekor) wrote: The idea is that I spent years studying different languages, generally with a textbook. The textbooks tend to focus on teaching rules and grammar, with a little bit of vocabulary and dialog each chapter. I think the focus should be reversed. I think it largely depends on the learner. Some people find vocabulary easier, or more interesting, others not. I have a hard time learning a lot of isolated facts (e.g. vocabulary), but I find it easier and more enjoyable to learn a rule that I can apply many times. But I know people who are the exact opposite. I wouldn't want to make an absolute rule. I generally like rules that will save me a lot of memorization. I hate rules that force me to memorize a lot. I am not good at memorization. I consider myself to be a highly logically-oriented (audio-digital?) learning type, as I expect many programmers are. However, I still don't remember most grammar lessons. The only way I successfully became fluent in a language (Esperanto) was through immersion, and that wouldn't have been possible without a decent vocabulary to start with. I totally understand, and I agree. And with only a few exceptions, I would say that vocabulary is more useful than grammar (even if I find the former harder to learn). That said, I cause Esperanto as a good example of a language with rules that make learning easier. In Esperanto, the ending of a word tells you if the word is a noun, a verb, an adjective, a subject, an object, etc. Knowing these rules makes it much easier for you to learn Esperanto. When I learn a language, I like learning rules that will make language learning easier. That being said, Esperanto, and even Japanese sentence structure perhaps is not as different as an agglutinative language like German. I'll need to study it more to find out. In the specific case of German, word order is a lot more important than any other language I know. You can get everything else about grammar wrong, but as long as you put the words in the right place people will probably understand you. But if you get everything else right, and put the words in the wrong place, you won't be understood. Absolutely. I'm not trying to claim that you only need 1,000 words to become fluent, like some courses claim. Ok. I probably misunderstood something. The idea is that once you can begin to read with a dictionary by your side you'll begin learning much faster because you can focus on reading what *you* are interested in rather than some contrived dialog from a textbook. In my case, the things I'm interested in are too technical :-( I've had a hard time finding things that are interesting and are simple enough for me to read in German. But I'll get better. So far I've been focusing on Japanese. I only have 15 or so stories currently. They take a bit of time to create ;) For now, the navigation is basically to click the Latest Links link in the header bar or in the Latest Links box. Ok. Cheers, Daniel. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
Chris Forno (jekor) wrote: The idea is that I spent years studying different languages, generally with a textbook. The textbooks tend to focus on teaching rules and grammar, with a little bit of vocabulary and dialog each chapter. I think the focus should be reversed. This varies wildly by textbook, with some bias for the language being taught. Personally I've found too many vocabulary textbooks and far too few grammar textbooks (that is, actual *grammar* textbooks not sentence-sized-vocabulary textbooks). Obviously grammar is very important. But is reading about it effective for everyone? In my experience learning and teaching languages, this too varies wildly by learner. Some people do better with an examples first or vocabulary based style where they must come to an intuition of the grammar rules; other people (such as myself) do better with a rules first or grammar based style where they must come to learn vocabulary on their own. Neither variety of person is superior nor, as far as I can tell, more common at large; so any good teacher or textbook should balance these bottom up and top down approaches. IMO vocabulary is easy to learn, it just takes time, whereas grammar is harder to figure out on one's own, and so is the better thing for a teacher to focus on. However, this says little about reference material (as opposed to learning material), and study guides walk a line between reference and teaching. JGram http://jgram.org/pages/viewList.php is an interesting study guide that takes a middle path, treating syntactic patterns the same as it does lexemes. This is particularly appropriate for a language like Japanese where it's not always immediately apparent whether something belongs to the grammar vs the lexicon. The only way I successfully became fluent in a language (Esperanto) was through immersion, This is, hands down, the best way to learn any language. For it to work, as you say, some vocabulary is necessary; however, I think the amount of vocabulary needed at first is not so large as some think. Daily small-talk for getting/giving directions, ordering food, and the like comprise a large portion of beginner's language and requires remarkably little breadth of vocabulary (a couple hundred words or so). Small-talk also includes some of the most obscure and difficult-to-master grammatical patterns like greetings, getting the right tone of politeness/familiarity, and knowing what sorts of sentence fragments and other ungrammatical patterns are perfectly acceptable. And of course it has very forgiving sentence and a rather simple grammar, but I'm finding the experience to be very similar with Japanese so far. That being said, Esperanto, and even Japanese sentence structure perhaps is not as different as an agglutinative language like German. I'll need to study it more to find out. Actually, Japanese is agglutinative too (moreso than German is). The basic structures of Japanese are quite simple, however the details needed for fluency are quite intricate. Phrase order is rather free, though it is not entirely free and it is easy to reorder things so that they no longer make sense to native speakers. Aside from a few of the common mistakes beginners make, if you mess up the cases/particles you'll end up with gibberish. -- Live well, ~wren ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
A very interesting read, thank you Chris! ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a Good Choice for Web Applications? (ANN: Vocabulink)
Daniel Carrera daniel.carr...@theingots.org writes: 1) You say that grammar doesn't matter. Well, for some languages it matters more than others. German, for example, has a very particular word order that takes some effort to learn, and if you get it wrong people really won't understand you. In German it's ok if you conjugate wrong, but it's not ok if you put words in the wrong place. Second, some people actually enjoy grammar better and find that grammar helps them understand the language. I am one of those people. Different people learn differently. I learn rules more easily than disconnected words. When I learn vocabulary I do better by learning word families, and so on. The Germanic languages rely heavily in word derivation (not so much English) so that can be important for learners like me. I haven't taken German into consideration. Perhaps I need to re-evaluate or restate my conviction. Maybe you can help me find a better way of putting it. The idea is that I spent years studying different languages, generally with a textbook. The textbooks tend to focus on teaching rules and grammar, with a little bit of vocabulary and dialog each chapter. I think the focus should be reversed. Obviously grammar is very important. But is reading about it effective for everyone? I know that some people enjoy studying formal grammars, myself included. I consider myself to be a highly logically-oriented (audio-digital?) learning type, as I expect many programmers are. However, I still don't remember most grammar lessons. The only way I successfully became fluent in a language (Esperanto) was through immersion, and that wouldn't have been possible without a decent vocabulary to start with. Fortunately Esperanto has a lot of English cognates and you can build a large vocabulary with it pretty quickly. And of course it has very forgiving sentence and a rather simple grammar, but I'm finding the experience to be very similar with Japanese so far. That being said, Esperanto, and even Japanese sentence structure perhaps is not as different as an agglutinative language like German. I'll need to study it more to find out. 2) Your analysis of word count is flawed. Sure, most of the words you read come from a very small vocabulary set, but most of the *meaning* in a sentence comes from the more obscure words. Imagine that you read this sentence: In the newspaper I read that the __ said that the problem is that the river has too much . In this sentence you can understand 90% of the words, but you have almost no idea of what's happening. What your word count test really shows is that human languages have a lot of redundancy. You could omit the word the from the above sentence and you would understand it almost as well. The word the is common and contains very little information. Absolutely. I'm not trying to claim that you only need 1,000 words to become fluent, like some courses claim. I do think though that if you focus on particles, common verbs, etc. up front you'll get to immersive learning much faster. Again, this has been my personal experience. The idea is that once you can begin to read with a dictionary by your side you'll begin learning much faster because you can focus on reading what *you* are interested in rather than some contrived dialog from a textbook. That said, do you have any stories in German? I can't figure out where to get the stories. So far I've been focusing on Japanese. I only have 15 or so stories currently. They take a bit of time to create ;) For now, the navigation is basically to click the Latest Links link in the header bar or in the Latest Links box. Thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciate it, and I'll take what you've said into consideration when I rewrite the front page. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
