PRGH 2017

review_of_content.md

• All You Need Is Lambda

  • Not recommended for a first introduction to functional programming. Most people wouldn't have an idea on what this really is.
  • But it is not a bad idea to convince people that "Computation by rewriting" really works
    • Maybe worthwhile to give examples of other esoteric turing complete systems

• The following chapters are rather essential:

  • Hello, Haskell!
  • Basic Datatypes
  • Types
  • Typeclasses
  • More Functional Patterns
  • Recursion
  • Lists
    • Strings should be seen as a part of lists. I do not agree with the order in the book
  • Folding Lists
  • Algebraic Datatypes
    • It's worth briefly introducing kinds.
    • Might be worthwhile explaining the algebra of algebraic datatypes
  • Signaling Adversity

• These chapters can be omitted. Or, we could just email related content to the students as optional reading material.

  • Building Projects
  • Testing
  • Basic Libraries

• It might be worthwhile introducing these ideas in one or two lectures.

  • Monoid
    • Optionally, semigroup
  • Functor
    • Optionally, applicative
  • Monad

• Given that the students have been already exposed to data structures with certain laws, we do not necessarily need:

  • Applying Structure
  • Foldable
  • Traversable

• I am not very familiar with these, but I think we can leave them out

  • Reader
  • Parser Combinators
  • Composing Types
  • Monad Transformers

• These chapters would familiarise the student with how Haskell is used for more real world applications. I recommended a brief introduction to them:

  • State
  • IO

• Non-Strictness

  • This is rather important. Some aspects of it like lazy evaluation, the seq function and bang patterns are central to Haskell.
  • However, we do not need to cover this in great detail.