Tikka: An Interpreter and Debugger for a Pedagogical Subset of Haskell

Abstract

Functional programming is a core part of many undergraduate-level courses in Computer Science. Pedagogical interest in Haskell continues to grow as functional idioms become commonplace in popular multi-paradigm languages. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) is by far Haskell’s most used compiler, but can hinder students’ initial learning because of its detailed and verbose error messages which are designed to support experienced users and cover a broad language surface. In this paper we introduce Tikka, an interpreter for a carefully-selected subset of Haskell with concise, beginner-friendly error messages, evaluation tracing, and a bespoke IDE. This paper discusses the design of an interpreter targeted towards novice users, and presents an evaluation of its use in practice through user testing and a side-by-side comparison of GHC and Tikka.