Compose :: Melbourne Speaker - Andrew McCluskey
Compose :: Melbourne will feature many excellent speakers. One of this year's lineup is Andrew McCluskey. If you want to see the whole lineup look here!
10:30 - Andrew McCluskey
Your first Haskell app
When learning a new programming language there is almost always a leap from learning to applying your knowledge. This leap can be quite large when learning Haskell for a number of reasons. One reason is the dramatic difference between Haskell's style of programming compared to more common imperative languages that many learners are more familiar with. As a consequence, a difficulty for those new to Haskell is identifying when and how to apply the concepts they've learned when writing an application. Another is navigating the Haskell ecosystem; including finding packages and understanding how they work. Finally, some newcomers may delay writing their first application, believing they need to be comfortable with more advanced concepts before they can successfully write useful software. This is not the case. While these abstractions are useful, many of Haskell's benefits can be enjoyed while sticking to its more basic abstractions.
By referring to a simple example application, we'll demonstrate how and when to apply some core techniques and abstractions, and alleviate the burden of starting an app from scratch. We'll cover a number of data types, type classes, and techniques, including:
- Effectively using algebraic data types to more precisely model the problem
- Using applicative parsers to read configuration from the command line or files
- Using the Monoid type class to merge layers of configuration. e.g. user values merged with defaults
- Using Maybe in place of null or exceptions to handle missing/optional data
- Using Either in place of exceptions or return codes to handle failures
- Using the Monad type class to sequence computations in a particular context, such as IO
If you've ever been intimidated by the thought of starting a project in Haskell, then this talk will give you a solid place to start. Along the way we'll see that, not only is Haskell a general purpose language that can be used to write everyday applications, but that it brings with it a range of benefits.
