5 Hints for Beginning Haskellers

Here are some things that have caused me headaches in learning Haskell.

1. Function calls. Functions are called by giving the name and the arguments separated by spaces. If a function f has two parameters, a and b, you call it with f a b not f(a,b). The latter would be a one-argument function whose argument is a pair. You can do things that way if you like, but it'll make things a lot trickier later.
   
2. Precedence. Those spaces in the function call syntax are about the tightest binding thing in the language. So if distance is an integer, and show is an (Int -> String), then show distance++" miles" is good syntax, because show distance is evaluated before the ++. On the other hand, if c is a character and cs is a string, then length c:cs is a type error. Haskell will try to evaluate length c first, then prefix that number to the front of the list cs. Instead, you want length (c:cs).
   
3. Parens in patterns. This is really an example of the precedence issue above, but it trips me up all the time. You need more parens on the left hand side of function calls than you'd think. I don't know how many times I've written code like the sample below, leaving out the parens at first.
   
• data Coord = Coord Int Int
• manhattandist :: Coord -> Int
• manhattandist Coord x1 y1 = x1 + y1 WRONG
  
• manhattandist (Coord x1 y1) = x1 + y1 RIGHT
  
4. Arrows in type declarations. The type of (+) is Int -> Int -> Int; and we're supposed to accept that the first two Ints are the arguments, and the last Int is the return value. But turns out there's a cool reason for this. An equivalent type declaration would be Int -> (Int -> Int) (because -> groups right). You can think about addition this way, and Haskell cooperates nicely: + is a function that takes one integer, and returns a function. So plus x y = x+y is equivalent to plus x = \y -> x + y (search for lambda in the Haskell docs if you don't know that backslash syntax). So if you need a one-argument function (that returns a function) for some reason, it's OK to go ahead and define it as a two-argument function returning a number; Haskell doesn't make a distinction, and it's more convenient sometimes to express it that way.
   
5. Monads. These are famously hard to get. There are 10,000 tutorials out there, and most of them help a little. I'd recommend you start by learning to use the important standard ones, like Maybe, IO, and List, more or less by rote. Beyond that, if you're in a situation where you'd need to roll your own, I'd say just forget monads exist and write the code yourself. Once you get so you really understand the ugliness involved firsthand, monads will be an obvious benefit. Anyway, that's my plan right now. I think I get them well enough to explain them, but I make a lot of stupid mistakes when I try to use them, so I probably don't understand them as well as I think I do. (More on this later -- I'm taking two classes right now that rely on Haskell, so I'll comment on this more as I have little insights).