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News
Intro to Template Haskell
2018-10-29
Our first Template Haskell article focuses on one narrow use case: Compile-time evaluation of constant expressions. Because we care dearly about avoiding sources of runtime errors wherever possible.
Restructuring
2018-10-22
We’ve restructured the site to make it easier to find content, added two JavaScript articles (one, two), and published some packages to Hackage. What’s next: Starting the Functortown course and continuing the Web Servers course.
GHCi helps those who help themselves
2018-10-05
Julie presented a workshop on maximizing the useful information you can get from GHCi. It wasn’t recorded, but we’re working on getting all that information onto the site for our subscribers.
The various forms of
Text and ByteString2018-09-03
Check out our new Haskell tip, entitled Strict, lazy, and builder – It covers the various string types in the
text and bytestring packages.Courses
Courses are video series about a particular topic meant to be watched in order. Some will be more theory-and-fundamentals oriented, while some will focus on building a project. Each course has clearly identified prerequisites and goals, to help you choose which courses are right for you. Each lesson comes in both video and text format.
The Validation Course
9 videos; 150 minutes
Starting from basic conditional statements and pattern matching, we build a suite of functions to validate user inputs, refactoring along the way to see what benefits using
Maybe, Either, and Validation types brings, as well as using newtype to differentiate inputs. We also demonstrate the difference between Applicative and Monad.Web Servers, from low-Level to high
4 videos; 42 minutes
This course starts by discussing what HTTP and web servers are and follows the HTTP specification in building a Haskell web server from scratch. This includes explaining different character encodings and the differences between the Haskell
Text and ByteString types.Reference
Each article explains a single, sometimes small, Haskell topic in detail. Some articles include video. Haskell reference pages supplement, but are independent of, the courses and projects. Haskellers of any level will find them useful as reference.
Compile-time evaluation
A straightforward common application of the often-daunting Template Haskell: How to make constant expressions evaluate during compilation to avoid one source of runtime errors.
Understanding contravariance
23-minute video
Contravariant functors can seem difficult to approach, but in this article, we look at them as a variation on a familiar theme: function composition.
Understanding profunctors
Once you’ve understood contravariant functors, you are so ready for profunctors! Profunctors extend and generalize the concept of a functor, but under the hood, they’re still made of function composition.
Introduction to GHC language extensions
GHC Haskell has a lot of language extensions, ranging from very simple syntactic extensions to very complex type drama. This article helps you understand what extensions are, how to use them, and which ones are especially useful as your first extensions.
Type applications
7-minute video
One of the first language extensions we recommend for Haskell learners and one we use often while teaching,
TypeApplications lets you visibly apply functions to type arguments. We demonstrate several common use cases.Scoped type variables
9-minute video
Another useful language extension that we recommend for learners and pros alike,
ScopedTypeVariables lets you extend the scope of a type variable over a whole function, including its subexpressions.Overloaded strings
13-minute video
You will certainly run into this language extension often. This opinionated piece explains what it is and why it’s so common as well as when you might not want to use it.
Monomorphism restriction
Sometimes your functions aren’t as polymorphic as you thought they were. This article helps you understand why the monomorphism restriction exists and how to work with it.
How to
show anythingDeriving a
Show instance seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes you find yourself dealing with a type that doesn’t have one. This article gives you some strategies for dealing with it.Transitions
Switching to Haskell doesn’t mean you have to start over learning how to code. Our transitions content is geared toward explaining how concepts from other languages relate to Haskell, so you can advantage of what you already know as you get started in Haskell. We focus on Java, JavaScript, and Python.
Operators in JavaScript and Haskell
8-minute video
Transfer your knowledge of JS operator tricks into Haskell
A JavaScript WAT and monoidal folds
We examine a puzzling fact about
Math.max() < Math.min() and what it has to do with monoids. This is a two-part article covering Haskell’s folds (compared to JavaScript reduce), monoids, and identity values.Function decorators in Python
If you like Python decorators, you’ll love higher-order functions. Here we show a direct comparison between decorators in the Flask framework and higher-order functions in
scotty, a Haskell web framework.Tooling
This section covers topics that aren’t about the Haskell language itself, but about software that helps you be more productive with it.
Viewing type information in GHCi
Master the
:type command and never be at a loss for knowledge of typesTyped holes
Get the compiler to help you develop code incrementally
GHCi configuration
Customize your Haskell REPL
Using
ghcidA simple but incredibly convenient tool that shows compile output in real-time as you edit.