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The problem with ML is that edit distance between two similar programs is much higher than C/Python/Java. You have to change a lot more to go from program A to
by coffeemug 10y ago
The problem with ML is that edit distance between two similar programs is much higher than C/Python/Java. You have to change a lot more to go from program A to a similar program A' than you would in an imperative language. Empirically, people really don't like that property.
- Confusion 10y agoI find this an intriguing proposition. Is there experimental evidence, both for 'the edit distance is larger' and 'people don't like that property'?
- SamReidHughes 10y agoHere's some. I used to be extremely comfortable with Haskell, but things didn't go well when I tried using it for the first online programming contest I ever did. It was just too slow to write code in, compared to C++, which I hadn't used for years. Being able to plop down variables in front of a for loop, or print statements, or extra conditionals to handle some corner cases or break out of a loop, and to just casually mutate local variables, makes writing out a solution go a lot faster, with a lot less mental overhead from having to janitor variables between maps, folds, and whatnot.