Beginners Guide to Haskell?

Question

I've been looking for a decent guide to Haskell for some time, but haven't been able to find one that seems interesting enough to read through and/or makes sense.

I've had prior exposure to Haskell a few years back, but I can't remember much about it. I remember the "Aha!"-feeling was incredible when I finally got it, and it was actually fun to play with, so I'm looking to rediscover the lost art of Haskell.

I'm familiar with Ruby and its functional programming tricks, so I think I'm not completely in the dark. Any links?

Answer 1

I found quite a bit here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=CZD&q=Haskell+code&btnG=Search

Answer 2

This is where I started. haskell.org

Answer 3

Kevin, is there a specific one (or a few) you recommend? I started there and picked those that seemed high quality, but most were dead boring or just didn't make any sense to me in the beginning, which kind of defeats the point of an introduction.

Answer 4

Some good places to start are:

• The Gentle Introduction To Haskell
• Problem Solving in Haskell

Other resources:

• Interesting blog entry on a Study plan for Haskell
• HaskellWiki
• Generic Haskell User Guide (PDF)

Answer 5

Once you get past the beginning stages, I would highly recommend reading Real World Haskell.

Answer 6

If you're like me, and like videos of presentations, than this is a good tutorial:

A Taste of Haskell

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Slides

It's a three-hour tutorial, that uses xmonad as a running example to explain Haskell to experienced (imperative) programmers. The presentation is given by Simon Peyton-Jones who, besides being one of the top Haskell designers, is also a great speaker.

Answer 7

The Haskell wikibook:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell

which includes the text from the great tutorial Yet Another Haskell Tutorial.

(The "Generic Haskell User Guide" paper is a fine paper, but I think it is a particularly bad recommendation for a beginning Haskell programmer, as it is more of an academic paper presenting extensions to Haskell and basically a different language "Generic Haskell" (i.e. Haskell with an old version of Generics) instead of standard Haskell 98. <irony>If you were looking for dense reading about Haskell, start with the Haskell 98 report.</irony>)

Answer 8

I've been told to look at Programming in Haskell, from Graham Hutton

Answer 9

One thing that is really unique about Haskell is that there is a mailing list exactly for beginners. Go to Haskell-Beginners.

Reading books is good, but having some humans to ask is always a great resource, too. Together, I think there is absolutely no reason to say "Haskell is hard to learn because there's no material on it."

You might also want to visit #haskell at irc.freenode.net.

Answer 10

Real World Haskell is a really good book.

Answer 11

Yet Another Haskell Tutorial (PDF) worked for me.

Edit: Updike points out that the text of YAHT has been folded into the Haksell Wikibooks. The PDF is still useful if you (like me) prefer to print out and read on paper.

BTW I have also read A Gentle Introduction To Haskell (also available as PDF). I will definitely not recommend this for beginners. It is only gentle compared to the Haskell Report. However it is a good reference when you have a solid understanding of the language.

Answer 12

This looks like it fits the bill in the style of Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby.

http://learnyouahaskell.com/

Answer 13

I have downloaded 10 slides from this page http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/book.html and going through it for many times. It workz ;)

Answer 14

Strange that nobody suggest Real World Haskell. That's IMHO the best Haskell book you currently can get you can get it for on or offline reading http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/

Answer 15

In addition to "Real World Haskell", find a copy of "Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming". Great textbook.

Answer 16

I like Haskell Tutorial for C Programmers. Especially if you are coming from an imperative language background as I do.