# Questionnaire results "Experience Learning a Functional Language"

**URL:** <https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909>\
**Category:** Haskell Foundation\
**Created:** [February 17, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909 "2021-02-17T15:37:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Cmdv](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.haskell.org/cmdv/32/1167_2.png) [@Cmdv](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/Cmdv)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909/1 "2021-02-17T15:37:11Z")

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I recently posed a questionnaire, to the FP community as a whole but due to my interactions in the Haskell community (video teaching on twitch/youtube) it received a lot of feedback from Haskellers.

It was titled “Experience Learning a Functional Language” and the basis of it was to try discover what works and doesn’t. It got 1128 responses so it’s not every person in the community but it was about 1k more people than I expected!!

Also the questionnaire doesn’t catch every edge case, the idea is I took them down different routes dependent on a criteria selected. 1: Not interesting in learning 2: Learnt but gave up 3: Learnt with no issues 4: learnt but took time and painful

One of the most shocking results for me was “Where did you start asking questions when learning?” 49.9% “I didn’t”!!!

Anyways there are some REALLY interesting answers in there and being I’ve not had the opportunity to correlate the results. I felt it be wise to share it with people of the Haskell Foundation as from what I gather it’s a part of the Haskell user journey that is directly being dealt with by the foundation so this hopefully should be of help 🙂

The questionnaire with some graphics:

> **[Experience Learning a Functional Language](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf9EwXjwR5_ondG_HLhqJtrqPZdeB2NZYQWKBXC9_j7tpjYDg/viewanalytics)**
>
> This is a survey to discover people's experience when trying to learn a functional programming language.
> Questionnaire will end Sunday 24th Jan 2021 :)

The spreadsheet of all the answers:

> **[Experience Learning a Functional Language (Responses)](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MHHDgmeDuCP1F9LfaOQg7Rc0tC2u0wKyzGbq5LQj0FI/edit?usp=sharing)**
>
> Form Responses 1
> 
> Timestamp,Which programming language did you first use to learn functional programming?,How long have you been trying/did it take, to get to a confident level of knowledge in FP language?,If you stopped trying to learn at what point...

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**Author:** ![wolfadex](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.haskell.org/wolfadex/32/846_2.png) [@wolfadex](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/wolfadex)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 1:40am UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909/2 "2021-02-19T01:40:55Z")

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As someone who spends significantly more time in the Elm community than the Haskell one, what do you mean by you shared it in “the FP community”?

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**Author:** ![Cmdv](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.haskell.org/cmdv/32/1167_2.png) [@Cmdv](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/Cmdv)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 9:59am UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909/3 "2021-02-19T09:59:11Z")

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@wolfadex

> **[Reddit - The heart of the internet](https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/l0hak9/what_was_your_experience_learning_an_fp_language/?rdt=63725)**

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**Author:** ![wolfadex](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.haskell.org/wolfadex/32/846_2.png) [@wolfadex](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/wolfadex)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2021, 2:06pm UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909/4 "2021-02-19T14:06:33Z")

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OMG, I did fill this out and completely forgot. My bad. Thank you for this!

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**Author:** ![ketzacoatl](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.haskell.org/ketzacoatl/32/1203_2.png) [@ketzacoatl](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/ketzacoatl)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 7:42pm UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/questionnaire-results-experience-learning-a-functional-language/1909/5 "2021-02-28T19:42:26Z")

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@Cmdv,

As even included in the questionnaire, a majority of individuals won’t speak up when they have questions - I believe projects like yours help to give those voices a place and way to be heard.

Thank you for sharing, this is really important work.