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> If one is able to write code in Haskell it tells a lot about them, and he might be a better programmer than one who writes in Ada or C++. And here's the arro

> If one is able to write code in Haskell it tells a lot about them, and he might be a better programmer than one who writes in Ada or C++. And here's the arrogant, self-important attitude that turned me off of Haskell. When I was using it, I didn't see any evidence that Haskell users are any better or worse than programmers in any other language. If it were true, why aren't Haskell developers taking over the world with their superior software? In reality, any new, interesting language is going to attract better than average developers at first, because those developers are always learning new stuff and trying different things.

Peaker 10y ago
> And here's the arrogant, self-important attitude that turned me off of Haskell. Haskellers are usually out to convince that Haskell is for most programmers, and that "need PhD to use it" is a myth. It is people frustrated by the (difficult) learning curve of Haskell that say such things.
- jlarocco 10y ago
  > It is people frustrated by the (difficult) learning curve of Haskell that say such things. And there it is again. I haven't drank the Haskell kool-aid, so I must not be smart enough to use it properly.
  - codygman 10y ago
    > If one is able to write code in Haskell it tells a lot about them, and he might be a better programmer than one who writes in Ada or C++. - solomatov > And here's the arrogant, self-important attitude that turned me off of Haskell. - jlarocco > It is people frustrated by the (difficult) learning curve of Haskell that say such things. - peaker > And there it is again. I haven't drank the Haskell kool-aid, so I must not be smart enough to use it properly. Firstly, reading "people frustrated by the difficult learning curve of haskell say such things" as "I haven't drank the Haskell kool-aid, so I must not be smart enough to use it properly." is a very uncharitable interpretation. Secondly, I believe solomatov and Peaker's comments could be written more unambiguously as follows (though I thought they were precise enough): solamatov commment rewrite: Someone who can write Haskell might be a better programmer than programmers who use other languages because Haskell is difficult to learn. peaker comment rewrite: People frustrated by the difficulty of the Haskell learning curve say things such as "Someone who managed to learn Haskell to the point they can write code in it have proven their worth more than those who use easier to learn languages" So jlarocco, could you still call classify these comments and the thought processes behind them arrogant and self important? Is there anything that would turn you off of them?
  - Peaker 10y ago
    Haskell is difficult to learn! For virtually everyone. Especially people who already learned more mainstream languages, because it is so different. When I learned Haskell I was frustrated by its difficult learning process until I stuck with it long enough, as did almost all who passed the learning curve. How do you get any reference to "smart enough" out of this? "persistent enough" is definitely relevant for learning Haskell, though.
- jonathanstrange 10y ago
  I started to learn Haskell several times and decided every time that it's not really worth effort and time spent. Technology should adapt to humans, not humans to technology. IMHO Haskell exemplifies the latter.
  - Peaker 10y ago
    Haskell is quite well adapted to the humans that like using it :-) Partially it's a matter of taste. I hated Haskell syntax in the first few weeks ("Why did they have to differ on this?!") but later I realized it's objectively nicer for expressing the things Haskell expresses and much prefer it. Then there's a lot of bad tutorials out there. And finally the tooling / IDEs aren't great for discovering the language and type system. I don't see significant ways Haskell itself could be more geared towards humans than it already is. It brings simple mathematical concepts and abstractions to the forefront - and simple is not easy, but is worth it.
derefr 10y ago
> If it were true, why aren't Haskell developers taking over the world with their superior software? Haskell doesn't make superior software; it just (as far as I understand) allows you to make software of equivalent quality, faster. (As is true of functional languages generally; and of strongly-typed languages with type inference generally.) Quality in all software projects sort of approaches perfection asymptotically, because nobody is all that interested in "perfect software." People just put in less and less QA effort as software "stabilizes", so the remaining bugs in a codebase (even one of static size! even bugs equally easy to find!) are found more and more slowly over time. One could likely take a "military discipline" approach to line-by-line code reviews, and get a constant output of bugs found per man-hour; but nobody except NASA—and possibly the military itself—is ever going to bother. --- All that being said, when people say "Haskell programmer", they're more-often-than-not referring not to anyone who codes in Haskell, but to the very specific type of person who creates Haskell libraries encoding new category-theory abstractions—which is to say, mathematicians. Programmers who happen to also be mathematicians do write "better" software than programmers who are not mathematicians, I think. This is just because mathematicians have much broader mental libraries of abstractions available to them, where any one of those abstractions may be the key to reducing an ugly, complex solution to a simple and elegant one. Being a mathematician doesn't force you to code in any particular language, but a lot of them happen to be drawn to Haskell when testing out constructions of new abstractions in category theory, computability theory, information theory, etc. Other Haskell programmers can then take these abstractions and—if they can understand them—reuse them in regular programs, such that those programs then become more elegant, in the same way they would be if a mathematician wrote them themselves. Of course, just because these libraries happen to be brought into existence in the Haskell ecosystem, is no reason for them to stay there. You can port such abstractions to any language you like (if it can support them—but many languages do!) It's just not often done, because it is kind of hard to "see the point" in such abstractions without reading this-or-that paper... and all the people who are willing to do that gravitate toward Haskell, leaving the rest of the language ecosystem with very few people interested in expanding their language-of-choice's abstraction capabilities. (Another sad network effect.)
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > Haskell doesn't make superior software; it just (as far as I understand) allows you to make software of equivalent quality, faster. But the same question applies to that claim: If it is true, why aren't Haskell developers taking over the world with their ability to deliver the same software, faster?
pjmlp 10y ago
Because companies want replaceable cog programmers that they are able to pay peanuts for. They don't want to pay for quality. Just look at Go design goals regarding target audience, as explained by Rob Pike himself.

Peaker 10y ago

> And here's the arrogant, self-important attitude that turned me off of Haskell. Haskellers are usually out to convince that Haskell is for most programmers, and that "need PhD to use it" is a myth. It is people frustrated by the (difficult) learning curve of Haskell that say such things.

jlarocco 10y ago
> It is people frustrated by the (difficult) learning curve of Haskell that say such things. And there it is again. I haven't drank the Haskell kool-aid, so I must not be smart enough to use it properly.
- codygman 10y ago
  > If one is able to write code in Haskell it tells a lot about them, and he might be a better programmer than one who writes in Ada or C++. - solomatov > And here's the arrogant, self-important attitude that turned me off of Haskell. - jlarocco > It is people frustrated by the (difficult) learning curve of Haskell that say such things. - peaker > And there it is again. I haven't drank the Haskell kool-aid, so I must not be smart enough to use it properly. Firstly, reading "people frustrated by the difficult learning curve of haskell say such things" as "I haven't drank the Haskell kool-aid, so I must not be smart enough to use it properly." is a very uncharitable interpretation. Secondly, I believe solomatov and Peaker's comments could be written more unambiguously as follows (though I thought they were precise enough): solamatov commment rewrite: Someone who can write Haskell might be a better programmer than programmers who use other languages because Haskell is difficult to learn. peaker comment rewrite: People frustrated by the difficulty of the Haskell learning curve say things such as "Someone who managed to learn Haskell to the point they can write code in it have proven their worth more than those who use easier to learn languages" So jlarocco, could you still call classify these comments and the thought processes behind them arrogant and self important? Is there anything that would turn you off of them?
- Peaker 10y ago
  Haskell is difficult to learn! For virtually everyone. Especially people who already learned more mainstream languages, because it is so different. When I learned Haskell I was frustrated by its difficult learning process until I stuck with it long enough, as did almost all who passed the learning curve. How do you get any reference to "smart enough" out of this? "persistent enough" is definitely relevant for learning Haskell, though.
jonathanstrange 10y ago
I started to learn Haskell several times and decided every time that it's not really worth effort and time spent. Technology should adapt to humans, not humans to technology. IMHO Haskell exemplifies the latter.
- Peaker 10y ago
  Haskell is quite well adapted to the humans that like using it :-) Partially it's a matter of taste. I hated Haskell syntax in the first few weeks ("Why did they have to differ on this?!") but later I realized it's objectively nicer for expressing the things Haskell expresses and much prefer it. Then there's a lot of bad tutorials out there. And finally the tooling / IDEs aren't great for discovering the language and type system. I don't see significant ways Haskell itself could be more geared towards humans than it already is. It brings simple mathematical concepts and abstractions to the forefront - and simple is not easy, but is worth it.

derefr 10y ago

> If it were true, why aren't Haskell developers taking over the world with their superior software? Haskell doesn't make superior software; it just (as far as I understand) allows you to make software of equivalent quality, faster. (As is true of functional languages generally; and of strongly-typed languages with type inference generally.) Quality in all software projects sort of approaches perfection asymptotically, because nobody is all that interested in "perfect software." People just put in less and less QA effort as software "stabilizes", so the remaining bugs in a codebase (even one of static size! even bugs equally easy to find!) are found more and more slowly over time. One could likely take a "military discipline" approach to line-by-line code reviews, and get a constant output of bugs found per man-hour; but nobody except NASA—and possibly the military itself—is ever going to bother. --- All that being said, when people say "Haskell programmer", they're more-often-than-not referring not to anyone who codes in Haskell, but to the very specific type of person who creates Haskell libraries encoding new category-theory abstractions—which is to say, mathematicians. Programmers who happen to also be mathematicians do write "better" software than programmers who are not mathematicians, I think. This is just because mathematicians have much broader mental libraries of abstractions available to them, where any one of those abstractions may be the key to reducing an ugly, complex solution to a simple and elegant one. Being a mathematician doesn't force you to code in any particular language, but a lot of them happen to be drawn to Haskell when testing out constructions of new abstractions in category theory, computability theory, information theory, etc. Other Haskell programmers can then take these abstractions and—if they can understand them—reuse them in regular programs, such that those programs then become more elegant, in the same way they would be if a mathematician wrote them themselves. Of course, just because these libraries happen to be brought into existence in the Haskell ecosystem, is no reason for them to stay there. You can port such abstractions to any language you like (if it can support them—but many languages do!) It's just not often done, because it is kind of hard to "see the point" in such abstractions without reading this-or-that paper... and all the people who are willing to do that gravitate toward Haskell, leaving the rest of the language ecosystem with very few people interested in expanding their language-of-choice's abstraction capabilities. (Another sad network effect.)

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> Haskell doesn't make superior software; it just (as far as I understand) allows you to make software of equivalent quality, faster. But the same question applies to that claim: If it is true, why aren't Haskell developers taking over the world with their ability to deliver the same software, faster?

pjmlp 10y ago

Because companies want replaceable cog programmers that they are able to pay peanuts for. They don't want to pay for quality. Just look at Go design goals regarding target audience, as explained by Rob Pike himself.