Learning and installing Haskell is easier than ever!
It’s been a long time since my last post about functional programming and the Haskell programming language… I’ve written a post last year showing all the reasons I think are enough to convince you that you should learn Haskell. From then on much changed and I have great news to tell. The language is evolving in all aspects, and I’m lucky to witness this evolution \o/\o/
The Haskell compiler (GHC - The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation system) generates faster code release after release, the community of people using the language is booming, including big enterprises like Facebook :D There are Haskell libraries to accomplish every imaginable and unimaginable task, and these libraries are centralized and organized in the Hackage repository. Are you using a library and need to search its documentation? Use Hoogle, the central Haskell documentation search engine… BUT, in this huge pool of good news I want to pick two special ones:
- Learning Haskell is easier than ever. In my old post I mentioned already the nice tutorial (for beginners) Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! and the book Real World Haskell. Now, great guys have created an even more awesome tool to learn Haskell: if you want to follow a good Haskell tutorial, practicing as you read, and even though install NOTHING onto your PC, go to the Try Haskell! website. It’s an interactive Haskell tutorial, you code as you learn, in the comfort of your favorite browser :)
- If you enjoyed the test-drive and want to install Haskell in your PC it’s also easier than ever. Now all the essential tools and libraries for a Haskell programmer are bundled in the Haskell Platform. Everything tested, stable and working nicely together. You just need to go to the platform’s website, choose your operating system, and install. Surely in Ubuntu the install process is the simplest of all: you add the repository and then type into a terminal:
sudo aptitude install haskell-platform:D
And to prove that installation is really EASY, I’ve recorded a videocast of me installing the Haskell Platform on Ubuntu and put it on YouTube. Here it goes: