If you have any advice for future students of this course, please share them here. I would be grateful and give extra credit. What would have helped you 4 months ago when you were just starting the course? Comment here and I will share your wisdom with my future students at the beginning of the next class. Please post your advice before 5pm tomorrow (Thursday). Thanks!

Carl Factora

When programming in Haskell, use `_` when you don't know what to do (it helps most of the time).
Start homework early (i.e., start it before the lab, so you can ask questions in lab).
Work in groups!
In tandem with (3), "work with your group to figure things out."

Chung-chieh Shan

Wow, can you give an example of where you can use `_` ?

Taylor Skidmore

Don't be afraid to dig into documentation. A lot of the documentation is pretty hard to digest and feels like it's geared towards people who already know Haskell, but it is incredibly helpful (especially looking at type signatures and such). Most Haskell documentation will have a button that says 'source' by the function type. Click it, and read it. You might be surprised at how accessible some of the source code is after just the first few weeks of class. Ken also gave the advice to read through the Haskell98 Standard Prelude. Once you get the actual Haskell syntax down and can read through Haskell (relatively) easily, reading the Standard Prelude and knowing how it's all implemented is really helpful.

The homeworks are challenging, but (in my opinion) were incredibly rewarding. Don't procrastinate on them. Ken also gives you the type signatures for most of the questions. Use those to your advantage, really reason through how the types affect what the function needs to accomplish, and use that to think about the implementation.

"Haskell Programming From First Principles" is a great book (http://haskellbook.com/), and I think it was a lot more helpful to me than Learn You a Haskell or Real-World Haskell. It's a huge book (1000+ pages) and kind of pricey ($59) but I totally recommend it. During the semester, I would read the chapters that pertained to the lectures and it helped a lot (the chapters on Monoids, Functors, Applicatives, and Monads really helped me to understand the concepts)

Utilize the instructors. Ken and Kyle were both brilliant: ask them questions, go to lab, go to office hours, and use the Canvas discussion board. Their advice and suggestions were always helpful, even with questions that didn't necessarily coincide with the lecture material.

Carl Factora

+1 for staring at Type Signatures

Adam Chon

Tips:

Take the readings seriously (don't just read it, work with it)
Stay on top of your homework, or else...
Get ready, to be ready for the world of functional programming (do some pre-studying, especially if you aren't familiar with functional programming)
But have "FUN"

Obvious/Overlooked Tips:

Take advantage of office hours
Go to EVERY class, you never know what you might miss (plus, Ken's got some jokes)

Di Zhong

+1 for don't skip classes

Wonyong Ha

Same reason for + 1

Di Zhong

Test your Haskell fluency based on the C fluency test for C335 before you decide to take this class. It's approximately the same level of base requirement.
If you're planning on taking it with Compilers, along with other classes that require a lot of work, think twice.
If your schedule conflicts with all of the office hours, try to make appointments with the TA/instructor, they will be happy to help.
If there is a final project, start early on it (approx >= 1.5 weeks in advance). If you're stuck, ask for advice.

Zachary Sullivan

I can second the amount of work taking it along with compilers. It provided an interesting perspective: implementing in P423 the concepts from B490

Brandon Peavler

My advice is to really take advantage of the assigned papers and give them a thorough read (and even try to implement the ideas). There is a lot of useful information in the papers that will not only help with the assignments, but also help you become a better thinker.

I also suggest that you try to get an early start on the assignments; they can be very challenging and if you wait until the day before it is due, it may end up hurting you, especially since the assignments can start piling up and you may get caught in a cycle of late submissions.

Zachary Sullivan

While reading papers, writing comments and trying out code was helpful, more engaging, and more fun.

Most importantly, I think that discussing homework problems and FP concepts with fellow classmates was the best way to make them clear in my mind.

Simon Lee

Study haskell early. Master it before you start working on homeworks. Make good friends.

Don't skip lectures or discussion. Ask for help all the time. Take C311 before taking Advanced functional programming.

George Witwer

I thought one of the most helpful things that took me a long time to start doing was using 'undefined' as a placeholder.

Also (this is a bit painful to admit) I was originally trying to ssh onto the school servers so that I wouldn't have to install GHC on my laptop. This was a... mistake. I would recommend against it.

I thought the paper with IO monads was extremely helpful and I wished we would have read that earlier.

Other than these things, most of what helped was just practice practice practice: getting used to writing Haskell.

Wonyong Ha

I think we need group works with the reading. Early of the class, we had been reading several papers which was quite hard conception. Therefore, some part I understand but some part, I felt like I was reading other language. Most of the points of in the paper, I could not understand why we had to know this stuff or when we actually could apply these thing. The application and the reason the author of the paper made new conceptions or complicated method were probably written on paper but I always thought its too specific case. I personally thought it would be good to know when can we actually apply it. Eventually, those papers new conceptions would be much better to apply on final project, the Party Planning.

On the other hand, I think the party planning and actual contest for introducing the functional program was very good idea. Despite I made little off topic things, I really enjoyed the party and had really great time. I think the class should more focus on the final project with little longer time. I also think it is good to review each person's work before the party and made more improvement.