• Latest News
• Purpose of the course
• Practical information
• Teaching
• Contents of the course
  • Week 1:
  • Week 2:
  • Week 3:
  • Week 4:
  • Week 5: (2008)
  • Week 6: (2008)
  • Week 7:
• Lab Assignments
• Resources
  • Haskell Documentation and Other Resources
  • Haskell Installation (GHC) on your own machine
  • More Reading
  • Old exams
• Examination
• Advice

Latest News

• 2009-11-19 Lab 3B now available Deadline Tuesday 1 Dec
• 2009-11-17 Lab 3A now available Deadline in 1 Week (Tuesday 24 Nov)
• REMINDER: There is a course discussion forum which contains useful information. Sign up!
• 2009-11-12 Today's code and minor slide update added (Week3,B)
• 2009-11-10 Added code for today's lecture (Week 3)
• 2009-11-05 Added some new slides for today's (Week 2) lecture
• 2009-11-03 This week: Thursday's drop-in time (2009-11-05) is cancelled. This Friday's drop-in (2009-11-06) will be extended to 11.00 (room 5461)
• 2009-11-03 Added code from Lecture 2A.
• 2009-11-02 Lab 2 published First deadline for part A in one week!
• The first lecture is in room EA on Tuesday 27 October 2009 at 10.00
• 2009-10-19 Please sign up to the course discussion forum
• 2009-10-19 Time and Location for the lectures (2009)
  • Tuesdays lecture 10-12 in EA
  • Thursdays lecture 13.15-15 in EA
  • Drop-in time for questions about exercises: Tuesdays: 9-10 (not week 1) in EA
  • Drop-in times for questions about the lab assignments (with Krasimir and Ann): see lab schedule below.

Purpose of the course

The course is an introduction to Functional Programming for students who know how to program. The students come mainly from the masters program at Chalmers and the University of Göteborg.

Practical information

• Instructor: David Sands
• Teaching assistants: Krasimir Angelov and Ann Lillieström
• Text book: I am not recommending a specific textbook this year. For those who like to follow a textbook I can recommend the following:
  • Graham Hutton: Programming in Haskell. A fairly new Haskell book that is a good fit for this course.
  • Simon Thompson: The Craft of Functional programming. A more basic book, but still covering most of the material in the course. It is important that you read the 2nd edition. You can also buy the book at Chalmers bookstore.
  • Real World Haskell New book, also available online. This is more advanced and more oriented towards practical Haskell programming. A good book to have on the shelf if you continue with Haskell.

• Schedule
• Discussion group: [http://groups.google.com/group/chalmers-fp-course-09] This is for discussion among the students about the course. All kinds of questions (and answers) on the content of the course are welcome. You own specific problems with the labs should not be posted here for obvious reasons.

• Do not ruin your reputation by cheating! Here is a link about it. Please read it.
• Lab assignment submisson instructions: The labs are submitted electronically using the Fire system. (To be set-up in week 1) For instructions on how to use Fire, see the Student documentation for Fire.

Teaching

• Lectures are usually given on Tuesdays 10.00 - 12.00 and Thursdays 13.15 - 15.00. Some of the Thursday lectures will end early. Ideally you should read around the subject of the lectures before.
• You should start to do the exercises before you try with the lab assignments.

Contents of the course

Week 1:

2009: minor updates.

• Intro to Haskell (View)(Print) ; (Thompson: Ch 1-4). (Haskell code from the lecture) Tuples and Lists (View)(Print) ; (Thompson: Ch 5). Datatypes (View)(Print) (Thompson: Ch 14.1-14.2). (Haskell Code).
• Exercises 1: Getting started with Haskell
• Lab Assignment 1

Week 2:

2009: Additional slides.

• Lists (View) (Print) (Thompson Ch 5, 6.3, 7) (Haskell Code From Lecture)
• More Lists, Classes (View) (Print) (Haskell Code From Lecture)

• Abstract Datatypes (View) (Print)
• Exercises 2: Recursion and Datatypes
• Lab Assignment 2

Week 3:

2009: Additional example program. Minor update to slides.

• Programming IO (View)(Print) (Code) (Code: Hangman.hs) (Hutton Ch. 9; Thompson Ch. 18)
• Data Test Generators (View)(Print) (Code: Sample.hs) (Code: Lecture03B.hs) (Code: Checking Datatype Invariants) Quick Check Manual
• Exercises 3: Lists and List Comperhensions

Week 4:

• Higher Order Functions (View)(Print) (Code: Lecture04A)
• Book reading guide (Thompson): See last slide of lectures.
• Recursive Datatypes (View)(Print) (Code: Expr.hs) (Code: ExprVar.hs)
• Exercises 4: IO, Test Data and Properties
• Lab Assignment 3

Week 5: (2008)

• Parsing Expressions (View)(Print)(Code: ReadExpr.hs)
• Parsing Expressions Monad Style (View)(Print)(Code: Parsing.hs) (Code: ReadExprMonadic.hs)
• Reading: (Tutorial article on Monadic Parsing)
• Exercises 5: Recursive Datatypes

Week 6: (2008)

• Guest lecturer Krasimir Angelov: Programming GUIs

• Laziness (View)(Print)

Week 7:

Lab Assignments

In the table below you will find links to lab assignments which have to be handed in. For each assignment have a submission deadline at which you must submit your solutions. If your lab does not pass (incorrect or simply badly coded) then you must resubmit. You have until the final deadline. The final deadline is absolute: it is the last possible date to hand in your solutions. If your solutions are not passed you get no further chances this term.

This has not been fully updated for 2009. There will be small changes to labs 3, and larger changes to lab 4.

Please read this link about how to get help!

Ann and Krasimir have open office hours listed below when you can drop in and ask questions about the lab assignments.

Notes: This is from course week 2.

• Thursday 5 Nov is cancelled.
• Friday 6 November is extended to 11am.
• Monday 23 Nov will be in room 5461.

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Resources

Haskell Documentation and Other Resources

• Tour of Haskell syntax.
• Haskell Hierarchical Libraries.
• A Tour of the Haskell Prelude (Also available in PDF format).

Haskell Installation (GHC) on your own machine

Ghc(i) can be downloaded from its home page.

More Reading

• Haskell Home Page. Everything about Haskell which is worth knowing (and more).
• The Haskell wikibook.
• Gentle Introduction to Haskell. Maybe not so gentle, but concise!
• The Haskell Cheat Sheet. Too long to be called a cheat sheet, but a useful summary of the language.
• Microsoft's new Channel9 lectures on Haskell
• Beating the averages. This is an entertaining article about Lisp, arguably the first functional programming language.

Old exams

• October 2003
• January 2004
• August 2004
• October 2004
• January 2005
• October 2006
• January 2007

Examination

The examination of the course has two parts: the weekly assignments and a written exam in the end of the course. To pass the course it is necessary to pass all home assignments and the exam. The exam dates are announced on the student portal http://www.student.chalmers.se/ .

• TDA451-0107 Examination : 15 Dec 2009 - 14.00, Johanneberg, Length: 4 hours
• TDA451-0107 Examination : 07 Apr 2010 - 14.00, Johanneberg, Length: 4 hours

Advice

• Do not be afraid to ask questions! Many questions seem stupid or superficial; they are often the most interesting ones. Basic misunderstandings often comes to the surface in a question you are afraid to ask.

Some advice which you shouldn't really need:

• check the homepage regularly,
• read about the topic before the lectures (then the lecture is more useful)
• solve the exercises before the exercise sessions (then the exercise session is more useful)
• start with your assignments early since unexpected things happens
• etc...