Hi, I'm a co-author of the book mentioned. Unpublished might be a bit uncharitable, the current version of the book is 26 chapters and over one thousand pages.
As for why? We make certain you actually learn everything you need to know and we _aggressively_ test and review the material with actual learners. My co-author Julie's first programming language is Haskell, which she has learned from me and while writing the book.
Here's a screenshot from our Zendesk for processing reader feedback and reviews: http://imgur.com/EdpL4ql
We are writing the book because I've been helping people in IRC (#haskell-beginners mostly which floats around 300 users), on Twitter, etc. I saw too many people burn out and give up with the existing resources (free & paid), despite maintaining a guide for learning Haskell with free resources: https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell
It's just harder than it needs to be, so we're fixing that. Even the better existing books/resources don't cover nearly enough for somebody to move on to, say, writing a web application.
If you didn't find it difficult to learn Haskell, that's great! But most people find it intensely difficult and I think that's completely unnecessary. I've given a talk on this titled, "Learn Haskell in less than five years" located here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg9ccYzMbxc
OK, I read "early access" and thought "unpublished".
I stand by my minor complaint that the article was deep in praise for your book and I thought minimized the impact of the many fine existing books on Haskell.
As for why? We make certain you actually learn everything you need to know and we _aggressively_ test and review the material with actual learners. My co-author Julie's first programming language is Haskell, which she has learned from me and while writing the book.
Here's a screenshot from our Zendesk for processing reader feedback and reviews: http://imgur.com/EdpL4ql
We are writing the book because I've been helping people in IRC (#haskell-beginners mostly which floats around 300 users), on Twitter, etc. I saw too many people burn out and give up with the existing resources (free & paid), despite maintaining a guide for learning Haskell with free resources: https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell
It's just harder than it needs to be, so we're fixing that. Even the better existing books/resources don't cover nearly enough for somebody to move on to, say, writing a web application.
I wrote about the pedagogical issues with some of the existing resources here: http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-12-31-functional-education.h...
If you didn't find it difficult to learn Haskell, that's great! But most people find it intensely difficult and I think that's completely unnecessary. I've given a talk on this titled, "Learn Haskell in less than five years" located here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg9ccYzMbxc