preface
Haskell is a language that, from the outside, may seem shrouded in mystery, academic vocabulary, and foreign concepts. While some of that is true, I fully believe you don’t have to have a PhD in mathematics to get things done with the language. It’s only a matter of the right introduction. It’s possible to start writing real programs very quickly with Haskell, and that is what this book is primarily about.
I will let you in on a little secret: the first time I tried learning Haskell, I failed miserably. No language ever felt this confusing and strange to me (except for Prolog and Uiua, maybe). It took me many years to revisit Haskell, and I couldn’t be happier that I did!
What changed the second time around was the introduction. I already had a few years of experience with other functional programming languages at that point and was fully entrenched in the academic jargon commonly found in Haskell discourse. First and foremost, I understood how to apply it, and since a language only makes sense once you can meaningfully apply it to a problem you are facing, I think this aspect is vital to learning the language. In this book, I want to highlight exactly that.