Haskell – Heaven and Hell?

A Gentle Introduction to Functional Programming

Heavenly:

The ‘heavenly’ bit is that Haskell is a functional programming language that is very powerful and different from the more commonly used programming languages. You enjoy great power to concisely describe and execute, well, almost anything. You too can explore such as the infinity of the Hilbert Hotel…

Hell:

The ‘hell’ bit is that Haskell is very powerful and different to our normal human way of thinking… For example, from haskellwiki – Introduction: “Haskell is a computer programming language. In particular, it is a polymorphically statically typed, lazy, purely functional language, quite different from most other programming languages.”

Here on Earth:

There is an active community around the language with more than 2600 third-party open-source libraries and tools available (Wikipedia). As technology advances further to use more ‘parallel’ ways of working, Haskell may well gain much wider use as it fits very well for such parallel ways.

Gently:

Here, Rory Holland gives a gentle introduction to programming in Haskell and the ideas behind why it is such a heavenly idea.

For new and old alike, infinity to be sampled at:

To find us, go through to the back of the pub and we’re up the spiral staircase. Just ask one of the friendly bar staff for NLUG if lost.

Food is also served through into the evening.

Wednesday 04/05/2011:

• 7:30pm: Meet
• 8:00pm: Talk
• 9:00pm: General discussions

All welcome!

Cheers,
Martin