| How do you get anything done in Haskell, you ask? Here are some steps: 1. Read a Haskell book and/or tutorials online, some of which are free. 2. Try writing simple software and reading other people's code. Ask for help when you get stuck. The Haskell community tends to be friendly and helpful. 3. Write your own non-toy code, hit real world problems and solve them. The path is very similar to other languages, except that because Haskell doesn't share the same lineage than C/C++/Java/Javascript, you won't be able to "wing it" by skipping the steps above. That's likely the source of your confusion: you can't as easily draw analogies to the languages you're already familiar with. Note that learning Haskell from exploratory articles which are meant for an audience already familiar with the language is not the best way to go about it. This is like trying to learn Java from an article describing the subtleties of the garbage collector in some interesting corner cases: it'll just confuse you and it won't have any practical lessons for the novice. People can and do write actual production Haskell code, so it can't be that hard. |
There's plenty of Haskell out there that is easier to pick up on without looking at what seems to be a jumble of letters that imparts deep meaning.
You might get to that stage at some point but books like writing a scheme in 48 hours will show you a much more accessible and elegant side.