5 ms·

Except that it's not necessary, because at least 3 solutions that don't use unsafePerformIO were posted to that Reddit thread.

derefr 16y ago
But "not necessary" has never been the problem here. People are complaining because the idiomatic way to explore a directory structure in Haskell isn't familiar to them—it's functional and mathy and strange (because exploring a directory structure in a pure-functional way is mathy and strange.) They want the language to be "as easy to use" as, say, Python, for directory-diving—but that basically means that they want to do it the same way they'd do it in Python. The only part that's hard is figuring out how to do it "the Haskell way"—a.k.a., the unfamiliar, math-filled way. What people need to learn is that you don't have to do that for everything. You can have all the advantages Haskell brings while not trying to make everything in sight into arrows and co-monoids; if it's easier to do it the non-idiomatic way (i.e. the way that doesn't involve turning your easily-expressible business domain into difficult-to-express Mathematics), then do that part that way, and get back to work.
- lelele 16y ago
  I think you've just nailed it down: Haskell is for mathematicians, or those mathematically oriented. Most programmers are not mathematicians (especially self-taught ones) since at the end of the day common programming tasks don't require you to know advanced math (I'm not implying knowledge wouldn't be very beneficial).
  - jberryman 16y ago
    mind sharing your experience with the language?
    - lelele 16y ago
      Learning Haskell has been a side project of mine the summer of two years ago, when there were a bit less tools to help newbies. Not an issue for me, since I've grown used to run code in my mind while reading it, because I firstly learned C without a computer for testing code on. I need fewer "reality checks" than more "hands on" developers (but I still throw snippets at the compiler to understand the gory details). I think Haskell is for those mathematically oriented both because only mathematicians would have cared to wrestle with monads to achieve purity (Clean is as pure as Haskell, with no monads in sight) and because its notation, whose succintness matches that of maths. I confess I've been scared of Haskell's heavy leaning on operators and many levels of precedence among them. I prefer more verbose languages. I'm not mathematically oriented, I think. Have a nice day.

derefr 16y ago

But "not necessary" has never been the problem here. People are complaining because the idiomatic way to explore a directory structure in Haskell isn't familiar to them—it's functional and mathy and strange (because exploring a directory structure in a pure-functional way is mathy and strange.) They want the language to be "as easy to use" as, say, Python, for directory-diving—but that basically means that they want to do it the same way they'd do it in Python. The only part that's hard is figuring out how to do it "the Haskell way"—a.k.a., the unfamiliar, math-filled way. What people need to learn is that you don't have to do that for everything. You can have all the advantages Haskell brings while not trying to make everything in sight into arrows and co-monoids; if it's easier to do it the non-idiomatic way (i.e. the way that doesn't involve turning your easily-expressible business domain into difficult-to-express Mathematics), then do that part that way, and get back to work.

lelele 16y ago
I think you've just nailed it down: Haskell is for mathematicians, or those mathematically oriented. Most programmers are not mathematicians (especially self-taught ones) since at the end of the day common programming tasks don't require you to know advanced math (I'm not implying knowledge wouldn't be very beneficial).
- jberryman 16y ago
  mind sharing your experience with the language?
  - lelele 16y ago
    Learning Haskell has been a side project of mine the summer of two years ago, when there were a bit less tools to help newbies. Not an issue for me, since I've grown used to run code in my mind while reading it, because I firstly learned C without a computer for testing code on. I need fewer "reality checks" than more "hands on" developers (but I still throw snippets at the compiler to understand the gory details). I think Haskell is for those mathematically oriented both because only mathematicians would have cared to wrestle with monads to achieve purity (Clean is as pure as Haskell, with no monads in sight) and because its notation, whose succintness matches that of maths. I confess I've been scared of Haskell's heavy leaning on operators and many levels of precedence among them. I prefer more verbose languages. I'm not mathematically oriented, I think. Have a nice day.