wiwinwlh VS haskell-handbook

wiwibwlh

In this respect, The Haskell Guide is not a tutorial, project-based guide or textbook, which aims to give a more complete walk through the language, in a linear fashion, but more like a reference guide that is carefully designed to be accessible and clear. In that respect, it's like a beginner level version of What I Wish I Knew When I Learned Haskell, with more cross-referencing. (By the way, I don't think this is a substitute for more in-depth or didactically rich resources at all; it's trying to address a different problem.)

Many libraries try to stick to Haskell 98. Also whenever someone writes a paper about some new techniques, they always seem to take a lot of pleasure in pointing out when their technique works in Haskell 98.

I like that you can mix and match GHC extensions even in the same project. So one library (or even just one module) might use some crazy and messy extensions, but you can still use it from vanilla Haskell.

http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/#language-extensions has a list of extensions and some judgement on them.

For example, I really like TupleSections. They are not strictly necessary for anything, they are purely cosmetic / syntactic sugar. But they also don't cause any mess. https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/tupl...

Also: TypedHoles are really neat for developing, and will never show up in your final code. https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/type...

Maybe try to implement something using Haskell? For example, try to read through: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Write_Yourself_a_Scheme_in_48_Hours to see how the concepts are used in a "real world" setting. Also, https://github.com/sdiehl/wiwinwlh is an underrated resource imo. Anyways, the best way to learn Haskell is to just use it. I'm still learning myself, so I don't have much to say beyond that.

All together that was a thoughtful and fair write up, thanks for that! I think you are spot on regarding monad transformers. Testing story is very good, the only part that I found harder then I would like it to be is testing IO code - there are some solutions that help but still, it is a bit surprisingly complex. And Template Haskell - it is not as hard as it sounds! Can be quite powerful without super deep knowledge. Btw here is short "cheat sheet" for Template Haskell that I wrote as notes for myself and others in the company: https://github.com/wasp-lang/haskell-handbook/blob/master/template-haskell.md .

haskell-handbook

I am trying to do something similar with https://github.com/wasp-lang/haskell-handbook, but much less ambitious - it is mostly there for me and my colleagues, not as a general guide, and is for intermediate level, not beginners, also has no order, just topics. But what I do is create issues with quick drafts and then fill them in when I have time and others can also add to it.

Wrote some popular tutorials on Haskell concepts, like https://wasp-lang.dev/blog/2021/09/01/haskell-forall-tutorial, and also are maintaining haskell handbook (still in infancy): https://github.com/wasp-lang/haskell-handbook .

I actually wrote a short text about how functions behave as Functor, Applicative or Monad: https://github.com/wasp-lang/haskell-handbook/blob/master/function-as-functor-applicative-monad.md .

Recently I realized I have no idea how should I define version bounds for my library and I got pretty confused before I finally figured out the reasoning behind it (thanks to r/haskell and Adam Bergmark from Stackage), so I thought I would capture that reasoning in a short article: https://github.com/wasp-lang/haskell-handbook/blob/master/dependencies-version-bounds.md .

As a result I decided to write a small article that gives overview of Cabal and Stack are and also compares them, based on what I learned: https://github.com/wasp-lang/haskell-handbook/blob/master/cabal-and-stack.md .