[darcs-users] performance (was GHC and Darcs)

Don Stewart dons at galois.com
Wed Jul 30 23:13:29 UTC 2008


ashley.moran:
> 
> On Jul 30, 2008, at 10:48 pm, Max Battcher wrote:
> 
> > It really shouldn't be that high.  If you are having serious  
> > problems may I recommend taking a pit stop in the land of Lisp or  
> > Scheme? Lisp/Scheme has a simpler syntax and lacks the type system  
> > that simultaneously makes Haskell more powerful and more complex to  
> > work with, and lets you just focus on learning some of the semantics  
> > (vocabulary) and paradigms (methods of doing things, modes of  
> > operation, thought patterns, tools, tips and tricks)...
> >
> > I don't write Haskell much yet, but I do see that my experience with  
> > Common Lisp (and to a lesser extent Python) generally give me a bit  
> > more insight into the language when I try to read it than I got from  
> > just trying to read Haskell-specific tutorials...
> 
> 
> Hi Max
> 
> Thanks for the advice.  As it happens two of the tutorials I was  
> hoping to follow are Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours[1] and  
> Writing a Lisp Interpreter in Haskell[2].  However this might be a  
> back-to-front way of doing it :)
> 
> My biggest stumbling block so far has been in Yet Another Haskell  
> Tutorial (the PDF version).  I was really rolling along until I got to  
> chapter 7.  This covers, infix operators, local declarations, partial  
> application, pattern matching, guards, instance declarations, class  
> derivations, named fields, lists, list comprehensions, arrays and  
> finite maps, and has *three* (count 'em) exercises.  (I know it's  
> free, but it represents 20-50% of the modern Haskell "books",  
> depending what you count.)  So I just froze, knowing that I would  
> never understand it all, and didn't want to have to come back to so  
> many topics later without really knowing how they work.

You could try working through Real World Haskell instead,

    http://book.realworldhaskell.org/beta/

It's much more practically focused then the beginner programming books,
like Huttons.
    
> Someone needs to show that it's easy to do Fun, Cool Stuff in  
> Haskell.  My driving instructor never taught me hill starts by  
> beginning with "Now this is a really difficult, demanding manoeuvre  
> that involves careful timing of the brake, clutch and accelerator"...  
> he just got me to pull off on a hill for a change.  I don't see why it  
> can't be the same with FP and Haskell.

-- Don


More information about the darcs-users mailing list