codeworld VS hack-assembler

Code World[1] is a great project that addresses a number of the problems from the article, with an eye towards using Haskell to teach children basic math and programming simultaneously. Code World directly addresses a number of the obstacles outlined in this article:

1. Using an online editor with a rich built-in library removes any toolchain problems.

2. A custom standard library simplifies pedagogically unnecessary details like Foldable

3. The custom standard library also avoids currying (f(a, b) for functions rather than f a b)

4. Custom error messages improve the feedback students get from the compiler

I would highly recommend Code World to anybody looking to teach programming with Haskell. If you want to teach Haskell in a way that fits the existing ecosystem, it's also possible to run Code World without the custom standard library[2].

[1]: https://code.world/#

[2]: https://code.world/haskell#

Alternatively, I'm a big fan of https://code.world which is specifically geared towards learners who want to work up to making simple games. It's kind of a toy, but imo resembles a "real" programming language a lot more than other educational programming languages

Loose connection, but made me remember https://code.world/ uses a Haskell-like functional language to define still pictures, animations, or even games.

I second gloss! It's a bit limited (no sound, fonts, nor even text centering, but you do have support for vector and bitmap graphics, color manipulation, mouse, keyboard, and animations), but it's so, so easy to use that I not only recommend it (or the similar Code World) for anybody's first game, I still use it for my newer games.

Try https://code.world/

Two that I can think of:

- Bootstrap teaches a toned-down version of Racket (i.e. Scheme): https://bootstrapworld.org/materials/spring2021/en-us/course... . It's taught in some schools as well as a comp sci curriculum.

- https://code.world/ teaches using a toned-down version of Haskell. To my knowledge it's not used in schools.

I had the silly 'fromString' error you get when using RebindableSyntax but had forgotten what to do next. Quick Google search and I hit on codeworld #59.

That's a matter of tooling and environment. You can have a look at examples of drawing animations with physics simulation and user input at https://code.world. It's pure Haskell code without any scary abstractions, just functions from state to the next state.

I'm not a user myself, but I understand Lambdabot and mueval depend on it. More generally, anything that executes Haskell code supplied by untrusted users would fit the bill. I don't know if CodeWorld for example allows user-supplied modules, but if it did they'd have to be Safe.

This book was my introduction to OCaml, and I followed it concurrently with the Nand2Tetris course. Project 6 of Nand2Tetris [1] has you write an assembler for their hack computer, and OCaml seemed like a perfect fit. Chapter 10 of this book introduces you to parsing and lexing, and it really fun following along while writing the hack assembler.

Here's an implementation for those interested: https://github.com/senhorsolar/hack-assembler

[1] https://www.nand2tetris.org/project06