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The Haskell language

haskell

TidalCycles is a domain-specific language embedded in (made with) the Haskell programming language. Haskell is a general-purpose, statically typed and purely functional programming language. Haskell had always been used, since its creation, by researchers/teachers, industrials, finance, etc… Haskell is renowned for some of its most distinctive features: type classes, insistance on the purely-functional programming paradigm, elegant syntax.

Haskell can be compiled or interpreted. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (a.k.a GHC) is the most widely used implementation. Tidal is using GHCI, the interpreted mode of GHC as a REPL to do conversational programming with the Tidal library. The text editor you are using when playing with Tidal acts as a “code-formatter” and “emitter”, sending lines and statements directly to the Haskell interpreter.

Haskell is sometimes considered to be a difficult language for newcomers. In reality, the situation is more complex than it appears. Haskell can confuse some programmers that are accustomed to another programming paradigm: imperative, object-oriented, etc… However, if you don’t know anything about programming yet, Haskell can be a wonderful language to learn.

Resources

General

Many Haskell tutorials are focusing on lists. They are important to learn, but are not very often used in Tidal.

NIL Haskell school - video lectures by David Ogborn (not tidal-specific but by David who among other things works on Tidal and related projects)