Sunday, January 11, 2009

my code has a side effect: learning!

So I'm working through the exercises in Real World Haskell. Here's what I've got so far. As of this writing, I'm in the middle of chapter 4. RWH totally deserves all the buzz it's been getting; it's very approachable and well-written, and my Haskell is improving rapidly. The book is still free online, but I bought the printed copy, in large part because Bryan O'Sullivan gave such a great talk at OSCON.

My earlier Haskell project had stalled out due to my not being very good at the language yet. What I want to do is build a compiler for Logo that produces JavaScript, with the turtle graphics on a canvas tag. Logo is an acceptable Lisp! I'd love to see it get more use.

Interestingly, though:

1 comment:

Stephen said...

I too had stalled out on Haskell until I ran into the RWH. Intrigued, I picked up a copy and have been chunking through.

What strikes me with Haskell is how much the strict type system forces you to think through the entire program before you get anything to compile.

This is definitely counter to my style where I bang out something ugly and then refine, refine, refine.