As I explore Haskell, I’m discovering that one of its trickiest aspects is not structuring things functionally, but the lazy evaluation. It turns out lazy evaluation comes with both great benefits, and significant difficulties. I’d like to point a few of these out, as they’re becoming clearer to me. [...]

I’ve been reading Real World Haskell now, after having finished the delightful Learn You a Haskell Tutorial. I’m up to chapter 6, about to dive into Typeclasses. In the meantime, I’ve picked a toy project that also has a taste of usefulness: a script to convert the Hackage database into MacPorts Portfiles, respecting inter-package and external library dependencies. I call it HackPorts, of course. [...]

Recently I changed how the content on this site was generated, from using the standalone OS X application RapidWeaver, to the server-side publishing platform Movable Type. During that transition I changed the site’s style to the minimalist default offered by MT, which uses its own CSS for column layout and typography. Tonight I finally got around to switching the site [...]

Today I need a wrapper script to drop arguments from a command-line. I instinctively reached for bash, but then thought it would be a good exercise for my infant Haskell knowledge. [...]

Everybody talks about Monads when they mention Haskell, so I got a bit ahead of myself and wanted to see something of what they’re about. No, don’t worry, I’m not aspiring to yet another Monad tutorial. I feel I have a ways to go before I’m ready to craft my own light-saber. I did read about 10 Monad articles on the Web, and found myself more confused when I came out than when I went in. Today’s exercise took about 5-6 hours of pure frustration, before a kind soul on IRC finally set me straight. It sure is difficult when getting past a single compiler error takes you hours. [...]

Having just begun my descent down the rabbit hole, I thought I’d try journaling about what I discover along the way, so that those who are merely curious can play the part of language voyeur. I’ve always wanted to do that: to see how someone dives into Erlang or O’Caml or Forth – or Haskell. Here’s your chance. [...]