Haskell Course

This course is designed to teach students Haskell from zero to everything needed to work with Marlowe and Plutus. The course itself doesn't contain content specific to Marlowe or Plutus. So, if you want to use it to learn Haskell for other purposes, you can! 😃

For a more detailed explanation, keep reading or watch the introduction video:

How much should I study if I only wish to use Marlowe/Plutus?

In the outline below, there are clear stopping points (for both Marlowe and Plutus) where we deem you to know enough Haskell to effectively use the technology.

How to read/watch the lessons

To go through the interactive lessons, go to your chosen lesson's outline inside "What we'll cover" and click on the button that looks like the one below. If the page loads with a "500: Internal Server Error" just refresh it, and it should be fine. At the top, you will see a console that displays the progress of preparing your interactive lesson. During this time, you can scroll down and look at the lesson, that is displayed non-interactively.

And to see the video, click on the button that looks like this:

To do the homework

1. Clone this repository.
2. Create a GitPod account.
3. Click this button to create a remote dev environment:
4. Select the Homework/HomeworkXX folder with the homework you want to complete.
5. Follow the instructions inside the app/Main.hs file.
6. Check the solutions in the "solutions" branch!

Repository structure

Haskell-Course
    |   |
    |   |---- Homework
    |          |
    |          |---- Homework01 (Homework for lesson 01)
    |          |---- Homework02 (Homework for lesson 02)
    |          ...
    |
    |-------- lessons (Lessons in Jupyter notebook format. Access through Binder.)
               |
               |---- 1-Introduction-to-haskell
               |---- 2-Functions-Data-Types-and-Signatures

Everything else can be safely ignored

FAQ

FAQ

Proposed changes for next iteration/version

Changes

What we'll cover

This is a tentative outline. Changes can (and will) be made as we advance with the course and gather feedback from students.

If there are no buttons on a lesson, it means that it's not published yet.

1. Intro and tools

• Intro to the course and lectures
  • What we’ll cover
  • Repository structure
• Intro to Haskell
  • How to open and use JupyterLab
  • Purely functional programming language
  • Basic syntax
  • Haskell Type system
  • Laziness
  • GHC (and GHCi)
• GitPod
  • How to open and use GitPod
  • Example of how to complete a homework assignment.

2. Data types, Signatures, and Polymorphism

• Pragmatic intro to types
• Type signature
  • Function’s signatures
  • Variables in Haskell
    • Parameters in functions
    • Names/Definitions
• Infix and prefix functions
• Data Types in depth
  • Int, Integer
  • Float, Double
  • Rational
  • Bool
  • Char
  • Lists
  • Strings
  • Tuples + Tuples VS Lists
• Polymorphic values and type variables

3. Conditions and helper constructions

• If-then-else
• Guards
• let
• where
• Using let and where together

4. Pattern matching and Case

• What is pattern matching
• Pattern matching on
  • Function implementations
  • Lists
  • Tuples
• Case

5. Improving and combining functions

• Higher-order functions
• Curried functions
• Partial application
• Composing and applying functions (. and $ operators)
• Lambda functions

6. Recursion

• Concept
• Examples

7. Dealing with lists

• zip
• map
• foldl, foldr
• scan

8. Intro to Type Classes

• What are type classes?
• Common type classes
  • Eq
  • Ord
  • Integral
  • Floating
  • Num
  • Mentioning Read, Show, Enum, Bounded, and Foldable.
• Class constraints with examples

9. Creating Types

• Type synonyms
  • How to define type synonyms
  • Why use type synonyms
• Defining new types
  • data
  • Value parameters
  • Pattern matching types
  • Record syntax
• Parameterizing types
  • Parameterizing type synonyms
  • Parameterizing new types
• Honorable mention of newType

10. Creating Type Classes and Instances

• Revisiting Type Classes
• The Eq type class
  • Defining the Eq type class
  • Defining an instance for the Eq type class
  • Improving our Eq type class (minimal complete definition)
  • Defining an instance for a parameterize type.
• The Ord type class
  • Exploring Ord type class (Subclassing)
• Deriving
• Complete example

11. Basic IO

• We need side effects
• What is IO
• main + putStrLn + composing other functions
• >>
• >>=
• do notation
  • do
  • <-
  • let
• Some examples
• Read/Write to console
• Read/Write to file

12. Bits and Bytes

• Grouping bits and bytes
• Haskell and bytes
• Lazy and strict byte strings
• Example

13. Pragmas, Modules, and Cabal

• Prelude
• pragmas/extensions
• Overview of base modules
• Importing base modules
• A few modules
  • Data.Char
  • Data.Tuple
  • Data.Array
• Creating our own modules
• Cabal
  • What is it and why we use it
  • Cabal file
  • Using external libraries with Cabal

14. Learning on your own and Map

• Using GHCi to find out more
• Hoogle
• HaskellWiki
• Walking through while teaching Map module

15. Maybe and Either (only practical use)

• Maybe
  • Why and when to use Maybe
  • Syntax
  • Examples
• Either
  • Why and when to use Either
  • Syntax
  • Examples
• Project using Maybe and IO

16. Aeson

• Aeson

---

YOU'RE READY FOR MARLOWE! 🥳🎉 (Keep going for Plutus.)

---

17. Monoid

• Basic idea (definition without details)
• Intuitive examples
• Extracting the pattern
• Complete definition (with all the details/laws)

18. Functor

• Basic idea (definition without details)
• Intuitive examples
• Extracting the pattern
• Complete definition (with all the details/laws)

19. Applicative

• Basic idea (definition without details)
• Intuitive examples
• Extracting the pattern
• Complete definition (with all the details/laws)

20. Monad

• Basic idea (definition without details)
• Intuitive examples
• Extracting the pattern
• Complete definition (with all the details/laws)
• do notation in general

21. Reader Monad

• Incentive/Motivation
• Binding strategy (see here)
• Definition
• Examples

22. Writer Monad

• Incentive/Motivation
• Binding strategy
• Definition
• Examples

23. State Monad

• Incentive/Motivation
• Binding strategy
• Definition
• Examples

24. Monadic functions / Operating with Monads

• liftM
• sequence and sequence_
• mapM and mapM_
• filterM
• foldM

25. Transformers

• TODO