I recently posted an attempt to explain folds using Haskell, and I got some feedback that the code samples were quite hard to follow for people that hadn’t played with Haskell before. Now the best way that I know of to quickly get started with Haskell is to go through the excellent Learn You a Haskell for Great Good guide. I heartily recommend leaving this post right now and reading it. The whole guide is available free online, but you can also buy print copies of the fantastic reference. Here’s the link again in case you missed it the first time.
Are you still here? Oh. Well, seeing as you don’t seem to want to listen to my advice, you deserve the rest of this post. It features a complete Haskell-n00b sharing his ignorance and misinformation with a reckless disregard for your quest to understand the basics of Haskell in a way that may permanently impair your ability to learn Haskell, understand functional programming, operate heavy machinery, socialise with other humans or be trusted with the weighty responsibility of goldfish ownership.
The aim of this post, despite your reticence to go through an extraordinarily helpful Haskell tutorial, is to get going with the very basics of Haskell insanely quickly and with a minimum of understanding about what’s actually going on. Because that’s just the way I roll. And let’s face it, you deserve it for not taking my advice. ;) (Last chance for redemption.)