Teaching Introductory Functional Programming Using Haskelite

TL;DR

This paper discusses using a step-by-step tracing interpreter for teaching introductory functional programming with Haskell, aiming to improve student understanding of substitution and recursive concepts.

Contribution

It reports on the practical experience and student feedback of employing a step-by-step interpreter in teaching Haskell to beginners, highlighting its educational benefits.

Findings

Students found the interpreter clarified misconceptions

Improved understanding of substitution and recursion

Positive feedback on learning experience

Abstract

Learning functional programming requires learning a substitution-based computational model. While substitution should be a familiar concept from high-school algebra, students often have difficulty applying it to new settings, such as recursive definitions, algebraic data types and higher-order functions. Step-by-step interpreters have been shown to help beginners by clarifying misconceptions and improving understanding. This paper reports on the experience of using a step-by-step tracing interpreter for a subset of Haskell while teaching an introductory functional programming course at the University of Porto. We describe the use of the interpreter, present some feedback obtained from students, reflect on the lessons learned and point directions for further work.