Introduction to Functional Programming and Haskell

Provide an introduction to functional programming using Haskell with an emphasis towards data analysis.

Goals

To get to the point of being able to:

• Feel comfortable navigating the Unix/Linux command line (aka. Terminal).
• Create programs that read text, perform analysis, and print out results.
• Understand and break a problem down into a manageable sequence of steps:
  • What are the input data?
  • What are the results of the analysis? How should they be presented?
  • What are the intermediate stages (datatypes) and steps (functions)?

Prerequisites

No prior programming experience required. Just a laptop running Mac or Linux with the Haskell tools installed.

Useful Resources

Linux Command Line (aka. Terminal, Bash Shell)

All our work is done from the Linux command line. Just a basic understanding of how to navigate directories and manipulate files will suffice.

• Linux Tutorial
• Linux Cheatsheet

Text and Code Editors

Though any text editor will do, learning Vim or Emacs is recommended.

• Vi Tutorial
• Vi Cheatsheet
• Interactive Vim Tutorial
• Vim Tutorial

Haskell Tutorials

• Haskell WikiBook
• Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!
• 99 Haskell Problems: If you can do all 99, you're awesome!

Haskell Groups for Questions, Answers, and Support

• Haskell Mailing Lists: The Haskell-Cafe and Beginners lists are great for newcomers.
• Stackoverflow
• Lambda Ladies
• Pittsburgh Functional Programming Meetup

Haskell Resources

• Hoogle: Search Haskell libraries by name or type signature.
• Haskell Libraries: The standard libraries that come with GHC.
• Hackage: A huge collection of various programs and libraries developed by the Haskell community.

Code and Notes from Sessions

• Examples.hs
• CommandLine.md
• Lists.hs