How I Learned Haskell by Writing Tiny Games

Earlier this year, I started teaching myself Haskell by using it to write short, text-based games. In this talk at Open Source Bridge, I shared some of what I learned, both about Haskell and about learning new things.

Transcript

1. How I Learned Haskell by Writing Tiny Games 1 / 77
2. Moss Collum Cyrus Innovation makingcodespeak.com moss.collum@gmail.com @moss 2 / 77
3. Introduction 3 / 77
4. What? 4 / 77
5. Haskell 5 / 77
6. Roguelike Games 6 / 77
7. 7 / 77
8. 8 / 77
9. 9 / 77
10. 10 / 77
11. Tiny Release Cycles 11 / 77
12. Why Haskell? 12 / 77
13. Brief but Fragile 13 / 77
14. Correct but Verbose 14 / 77
15. Brief and Correct 15 / 77
16. Why This Exercise? 16 / 77
17. "Work Tiny!" –Kim Wallmark 17 / 77
18. Game 1: InstaPermaDeathHack 18 / 77
19. 19 / 77
20. 20 / 77
21. Learn IO... Before you learn the IO Monad... Before you learn Monads 21 / 77
22. 22 / 77
23. One Problem at a Time 23 / 77
24. Game 2: Wanderer 24 / 77
25. How to Read a Haskell 25 / 77
26. How to Read a Haskell 26 / 77
27. How to Read a Haskell vs. Python 27 / 77
28. How to Read a Haskell vs. Java 28 / 77
29. Laziness is Magic 29 / 77
30. Laziness is Magic 30 / 77
31. Laziness is Magic vs. 31 / 77
32. Ask for Help 32 / 77
33. Game 3: Robot Finds Kitten 33 / 77
34. Isolate IO and Randomness 34 / 77
35. Isolate IO and Randomness 35 / 77
36. Isolate IO and Randomness vs. 36 / 77
37. Doctest 37 / 77
38. Doctest 38 / 77
39. Doctest 39 / 77
40. Doctest 40 / 77
41. Doctest 41 / 77
42. Continuous Feedback 42 / 77
43. Game 4: The Orc and The Pie 43 / 77
44. Retrospectives 44 / 77
45. Retrospectives "design suffering from having everything in the world tied together" 45 / 77
46. Retrospectives "design suffering from having everything in the world tied together" "my functions are nice and decomposed, but my data types are a big mess" 46 / 77
47. Modules 47 / 77
48. Modules 48 / 77
49. Modules 49 / 77
50. Record Types 50 / 77
51. Record Types 51 / 77
52. Record Types 52 / 77
53. Record Types 53 / 77
54. Functions 54 / 77
55. Functions 55 / 77
56. Functions 56 / 77
57. Functions 57 / 77
58. Functions 58 / 77
59. Functions 59 / 77
60. Typeclasses 60 / 77
61. Typeclasses 61 / 77
62. Typeclasses Compare Java: 62 / 77
63. Stop and Reflect 63 / 77
64. Conclusion 64 / 77
65. Places to Find Help 65 / 77
66. Places to Find Help Learn You A Haskell 66 / 77
67. Places to Find Help Learn You A Haskell Hoogle 67 / 77
68. Places to Find Help Learn You A Haskell Hoogle HaskellWiki 68 / 77
69. Places to Find Help Learn You A Haskell Hoogle HaskellWiki Haskell Now / #NotHaskell 69 / 77
70. Advice to Remember 70 / 77
71. Advice to Remember Work Tiny 71 / 77
72. Advice to Remember Work Tiny One Problem at a Time 72 / 77
73. Advice to Remember Work Tiny One Problem at a Time Ask for Help 73 / 77
74. Advice to Remember Work Tiny One Problem at a Time Ask for Help Continuous Feedback 74 / 77
75. Advice to Remember Work Tiny One Problem at a Time Ask for Help Continuous Feedback Stop and Reflect 75 / 77
76. End 76 / 77
77. Moss Collum Cyrus Innovation makingcodespeak.com moss.collum@gmail.com @moss 77 / 77