[rifung]

> The rating of the "Educational" section still remains "Immature" until this book is out of Early Access and finally released, but once the book is out I will finally mark Haskell as having "Mature" educational resources.

I haven't read the book myself, but is the book really so good that we can go from "Immature" to "Mature" with the release of just one book? I find that to be a bit strange considering Haskell is a very complicated language; I have a hard time believing a single book (that is beginner friendly no less) could really explain everything there is to know about Haskell.

[phamilton]

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good has been an excellent resource for the intermediate programmer. Much of the intermediate to advanced space is already quite mature. The beginner space was the big gap.

[coolsunglasses]

Hi, I'm a coauthor of the book mentioned in the State of the Union post.

The beginner parts were _a_ gap, but they weren't the only gap. In fact, none of the existing books really went very far beyond Monad, with only RWH covering monad transformers.

So, part of the appeal of the book isn't just that we cover beginner topics better, we cover _everything_ from beginner to intermediate/advanced that you're likely to apply in order to, say, make a web application. And in fact, we use a micro web framework in Haskell to demonstrate stuff in the later chapters.

It may not seem like it, because chapters like "data structures" actually cover - profiling time, profiling memory, containers, benchmarking, constant applicative forms, avoiding memory leaks, etc.

We'll be updating the site to explain what each chapter covers in more detail soon.

I've spent a couple years teaching Haskell and haven't found LYAH to set anyone up for success in Haskell. They usually hit a brick wall because they don't have either the foundation or intermediate idioms to really get anywhere. So there's usually a 45-days-in-the-desert period after LYAH where they have to muck through tens or hundreds of blog posts to plug all the gaps.

I talk about this here: http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-12-31-functional-education.h...

Suffice to say, I would've happily written a much smaller, shorter book - but this was needed.

[xiphias]

I think the problem with Haskell is that you need to be on the advanced level to be able to write a web app. Every beginner PHP coder can throw a website together, it shouldn't be harder than that in a higher level language, but it still is.

[coolsunglasses]

Ah no, the more advanced frameworks have better marketing and more bling to offer. Scotty is quite usable for someone that knows the basics, much like Sinatra.

Our coverage is less based on hard necessity and more on "what are they likely to want to do". Haskell just isn't as flat as other language ecosystems. Tons of people exploring how to do things better but there's a perfectly pleasant, conservative core of libraries you can use.

[samdoshi]

> The beginner parts were _a_ gap, but they weren't the only gap. In fact, none of the existing books really went very far beyond Monad, with only RWH covering monad transformers.

Having finally got productive using Haskell (on my second attempt at learning it), I can concur, if you're an already seasoned programmer, you need to grok transformers and mtl before you'll feel as useful as you are elsewhere.

[rifung]

I'm happy to hear there's FINALLY a book that goes into performance and data structures.

I'm going to have to read this book after I'm done with my current one.

[rifung]

I read Learn You a Haskell but it seems to only cover beginning topics of Haskell. However I don't really recall much being made for intermediate or advanced Haskellers? At least I looked, hoping to learn more but didn't find anything that sounded particularly promising. If you have anything to recommend please let me know. I heard Real World Haskell was good but unfortunately hasn't been kept up to date.

[rjayatilleka]

Did you switch that up? Learn You a Haskell is excellent for beginners. The intermediate space is the gap.

[phamilton]

Beginner Haskeller, intermediate programmer is what I meant. Great for learning a new language, not great for learning a first language.

[mseri]

The book is absolutely great, independently of the level. And also incredibly enjoyable to read and full of useful and well thought exercises and remarks