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News
Clock and reference
2018-12-07
We start our new series, Timepieces, with getting started with fltkhs. In Functortown lesson 4, breaking the laws!, Julie introduces using the Hedgehog library. We also have an overview of parsing libraries, an intro to concepts related to primitives, and more reference pages.
Almost Time
2018-12-01
This week we released the third lesson in Functortown, Laws and orders, and the eighth lesson in Web Servers, The Never-ending response, and announce the beginning of a new course.
The Lessons Continue
2018-11-24
This week we released the second lesson in Functortown, More common functors, and the seventh lesson in Web Servers, Chunking the message body.
A New Course Begins
2018-11-16
This week we are beginning the Functortown course, a complete introduction to all kinds of functors. We also have added two new lessons in the Web Servers course since our last blog post, and we added a site index so the tags on posts are now clickable!
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
6 videos; 49 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.Functortown
This course will be a complete survey of functors, addressing such issues as what functors are in general and how the different functors are related to each other. It will be a long course, spending 3-5 lessons on each typeclass, and cover
Functor, Bifunctor, Applicative, Traversable, Monad, Contravariant, and Profunctor, with motivating examples and discussions of what each is good for, the laws governing each, how to property test instances.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.
Primitives, levity, and boxing
GHC makes it possible to access a lot of internals that most programming languages would hide away entirely. Rarely do you need them, but we get curious when we hear people talk about primitive, lifted, and boxed types.
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.