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The article says that the instructor for the course cautioned against using Haskell because some people overestimated their competency with it. I think it is a

The article says that the instructor for the course cautioned against using Haskell because some people overestimated their competency with it. I think it is actually very likely that people would chose a programming language or system for reasons other than how competent they are with it. E.g. to seem "smart" because you wrote your compiler in Haskell, even though you actually have much more experience with Java or Python. FTA: > Another interesting thing to note is that at the start of every offering of the course the professor says that students can use any language that can run on the school servers, but issues a warning that teams using Haskell have the highest variance in mark of any language, with many teams using Haskell overestimating their ability and crashing and burning then getting a terrible mark, more than any other language, while some Haskell teams do quite well and get perfect like my friends.

galaxyLogic 7y ago
> would chose a programming language or system for reasons other than how competent they are with it Good point these were students so they were eager to learn new things. Can't blame them. At the same time much of programming is learning new things continually. Some things are harder to learn and master than others. Seems like Haskell might be one such thing, based on what the professor says.
- anaphor 7y ago
  Yeah, I think the problem comes when you try to learn too many new things at once. If you're still learning about compilers, then trying to learn about functional programming on top of that is just asking for trouble.
willtim 7y ago
Sounds like he (edit: or more accurately, the university) has hasn't taught them enough functional programming and Haskell.
- epse 7y ago
  He teaches compilers. Not programming or fp, so definitely not the professors fault
  - willtim 7y ago
    Yes, but it's still a great pity, as Haskell, a descendent of ML (the "meta-language") is a suberb fit for writing a compiler.
- anaphor 7y ago
  It's my understanding that UW offers some undergrad courses in Racket, but apparently they're optional so if you hadn't taken that course you might not know much about functional programming.
- 256 7y ago
  There is a mandatory compilers-lite course at UW and he teaches the advanced version of it, where the project is to fill in pieces of a Scala-lite compiler written in Scala.

galaxyLogic 7y ago

> would chose a programming language or system for reasons other than how competent they are with it Good point these were students so they were eager to learn new things. Can't blame them. At the same time much of programming is learning new things continually. Some things are harder to learn and master than others. Seems like Haskell might be one such thing, based on what the professor says.

anaphor 7y ago
Yeah, I think the problem comes when you try to learn too many new things at once. If you're still learning about compilers, then trying to learn about functional programming on top of that is just asking for trouble.

willtim 7y ago

Sounds like he (edit: or more accurately, the university) has hasn't taught them enough functional programming and Haskell.

epse 7y ago
He teaches compilers. Not programming or fp, so definitely not the professors fault
- willtim 7y ago
  Yes, but it's still a great pity, as Haskell, a descendent of ML (the "meta-language") is a suberb fit for writing a compiler.
anaphor 7y ago
It's my understanding that UW offers some undergrad courses in Racket, but apparently they're optional so if you hadn't taken that course you might not know much about functional programming.
256 7y ago
There is a mandatory compilers-lite course at UW and he teaches the advanced version of it, where the project is to fill in pieces of a Scala-lite compiler written in Scala.