[Haskell-cafe] First steps in Haskell

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| (mild) culture shock here. It is typical for people in the Haskell
| community to view things in a rather principled way. A language
| tutorial is supposed to introduce /the language/. If you want to know
| how to compile or execute a Haskell program, well then, look at the
| appropriate tutorial on the /implementation/. At first this may appear
| like deliberately creating hurdles, but it isn't, it's merely the way
| many (though not all) Haskell people tend to think. They take it for
| granted that a new user is at least educated enough to be aware of the
| difference between the language itself, and its concrete implementation
| in the form of an interpretation or a compilation system.

I, for one, don't take it for granted!  Furthermore, I think the Haskell community is pretty friendly; for example, a great deal of entirely non-condescending advice is given to newcomers on Haskell Café.  I'm certain there are hurdles, but I think on the whole they are there by accident rather than design.  (Apart from functional programming itself, which often is a bit of a hurdle, but that's the reason we are here!)

It turns out that there are a couple of introductory Wiki pages already:
	http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellNewbie
	http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellDemo

It'd be great if someone would like to improve them in the light of this thread.  (Anyone can do this.)  Ideally there should be a single Wiki page that the Haskell.org web site can point to; perhaps the editing could bear that in mind?

Simon