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by mdcox 4067 days ago
To pick up the basics of a language similar to one you already know? Sure. I used this site to write something in Nim just a few days ago.

Do I know the conventions or idioms? No. Do I know the advanced features of Nim? I sincerely doubt it. But I know Python, and seeing the syntax written out is enough for me to correct my informed guesses in how to write it.

I doubt I could use it to pick up Haskell or a language whose paradigm I was unfamiliar with though.

1 comments

Tried just this with Haskell, got about halfway through before I started feeling like things were being glossed over.
Mind elaborating where you felt like things were being glossed over?

Is glossing over things necessarily a bad thing? Isn't learnXinY just an introduction site?

Have you tried the howistart[0] for Haskell?

0: http://howistart.org/posts/haskell/1

Not saying I don't like the site – it's pretty cool. Just replying to the person talking about trying to pick up unfamiliar languages with it.

I started getting a bit turned around when I got to Guards and Pattern Matching, which are concepts I'm not super familiar with. I wasn't really legitimately trying to learn Haskell, just casually looking into it for funzies.

how long did it take you to read halfway through?
Not sure, maybe 10-15 minutes?