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> And Haskell particularly comes with so many syntax quirks Wouldn't agree per se, I'd rather formulate "it gives the user-land a lot of freedom & powers for i

> And Haskell particularly comes with so many syntax quirks Wouldn't agree per se, I'd rather formulate "it gives the user-land a lot of freedom & powers for introducing syntax quirks". You can code super-clean Haskell, or you can roll in 2 dozen language extensions and libraries with a 100+ custom operators, and use TemplateHaskell --- then yeah the syntax will begin to look horribly "quirky". Many practitioners end up limiting themselves in this regard after a while, or insist on "going back to basics" as much as feasible

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
> super-clean Haskell The super-cleanest Haskell still has a ton of syntax to learn compared to Scheme. If your goal is to teach concepts of programming, almost any time spent on the syntax of a particular language is time wasted. Particularly so during a semester in university. Similarly, if you won't be using FP for your day job, and would be using it for the insight gained (and have never used it), a language where you can begin learning concepts without needing to internals a bunch of syntax or infix operator precedence rules is also the better choice.
- dualogy 9y ago
  > a ton of syntax to learn A handful of keywords (same as any language), fewer (mandatory) parens & braces than any other language, no (mandatory) semicolons, the same sort of indentation one tends to apply in any language anyway --- Essential-Haskell's "ton of syntax" in a nutshell. Precedence rules for the built-in `Num` and `Bool` operators are equivalent to all languages. Other operators are either custom-defined (outside the scope of language's "syntax") or entirely inessential convenience-vehicles such as for composition (unnecessary, just handy in practice) or avoiding even more parens (dito) --- of which there are 2. Any tutorials or text-books that rely on such or other operators as part of "syntax" are, in that respect, simply a bit flawed.

BoiledCabbage 9y ago

> super-clean Haskell The super-cleanest Haskell still has a ton of syntax to learn compared to Scheme. If your goal is to teach concepts of programming, almost any time spent on the syntax of a particular language is time wasted. Particularly so during a semester in university. Similarly, if you won't be using FP for your day job, and would be using it for the insight gained (and have never used it), a language where you can begin learning concepts without needing to internals a bunch of syntax or infix operator precedence rules is also the better choice.

dualogy 9y ago
> a ton of syntax to learn A handful of keywords (same as any language), fewer (mandatory) parens & braces than any other language, no (mandatory) semicolons, the same sort of indentation one tends to apply in any language anyway --- Essential-Haskell's "ton of syntax" in a nutshell. Precedence rules for the built-in `Num` and `Bool` operators are equivalent to all languages. Other operators are either custom-defined (outside the scope of language's "syntax") or entirely inessential convenience-vehicles such as for composition (unnecessary, just handy in practice) or avoiding even more parens (dito) --- of which there are 2. Any tutorials or text-books that rely on such or other operators as part of "syntax" are, in that respect, simply a bit flawed.