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Haskell Interlude 36 - John Hughes (haskell.foundation)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In this episode, Matti and Wouter are joined by John Hughes. John is one of the authors of the original Haskell Report and talks about why functional programming matters, the origins of QuickCheck testing, and how higher order functions and lazy evaluation is the key that makes functional programming so productive, and so much fun!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

Type classes are a big cause of confusion among newcomers, and even parametric polymorphism.

If you want to see how simple a language can really get you should check out Hedy: https://www.hedycode.com/. It even removes string quotes (let alone variables) at the simplest level. Although it is too imperative for my taste.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (6 children)

@jaror @BoydStephenSmithJr Type classes have been in Haskell since forever. There’s no Haskell “level” that would avoid them while being a level of Haskell instead of some vague/generic “functional programming”.
If you want to teach Haskell - you teach Haskell, with its staples like type classes and laziness.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I'm not suggesting you should never explain type classes. I simply want to avoid having to explain type classes before I can explain how to add two integers. And more importantly, I don't want error messages to mention type classes until they have been understood.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

@jaror @BoydStephenSmithJr Understandable… I’ve thought default rules made that possible.

Anyway, I didn’t encounter much problems with type classes while teaching Haskell, not even as a first language. May all of my students were okay with some suspense 😅

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