Book Image

Haskell Design Patterns

By : Tikhon Jelvis, Ryan Lemmer
Book Image

Haskell Design Patterns

By: Tikhon Jelvis, Ryan Lemmer

Overview of this book

Design patterns and idioms can widen our perspective by showing us where to look, what to look at, and ultimately how to see what we are looking at. At their best, patterns are a shorthand method of communicating better ways to code (writing less, more maintainable, and more efficient code) This book starts with Haskell 98 and through the lens of patterns and idioms investigates the key advances and programming styles that together make "modern Haskell". Your journey begins with the three pillars of Haskell. Then you'll experience the problem with Lazy I/O, together with a solution. You'll also trace the hierarchy formed by Functor, Applicative, Arrow, and Monad. Next you'll explore how Fold and Map are generalized by Foldable and Traversable, which in turn is unified in a broader context by functional Lenses. You'll delve more deeply into the Type system, which will prepare you for an overview of Generic programming. In conclusion you go to the edge of Haskell by investigating the Kind system and how this relates to Dependently-typed programming
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Higher-order kinds


Types classify values at different levels of abstraction, for example:

­­-- Primitive types 
­­-- "a string"   :: String 
­­-- 12             :: Int  
 
--­­ instances of higher­order, parametrized types 
­­-- Just 10      :: Maybe Int 
­­-- Left 10      :: Either Int b 
 
­­-- functions are first class values 
­­-- (* 2)          :: Num a => a ­> a 
 
­­-- type­constructors are functions 
­­-- Just          :: a ­> Maybe a 
­­-- Left          :: a ­> Either a b

In a similar way, kinds classify types. For monomorphic types (that is, not polymorphic), the kind signature is just the placeholder *:

­­-- TYPE       KIND 
­­-- [Char]     ::  * 
­­-- Maybe Int  ::  * 

Parametric types express higher-order kinds, for example:

   Maybe  ::  * -> *
   --         a -> Maybe a

where (* -> *) is a placeholder for a -> Maybe a. Let's compare this with the kind signature of Either:

­­-- Either   * ->  * -> * 
­­--              a -> b -> Either a b

The Haskell...