3 ms·
My first language (not counting Basic or Fortran on punched cards) was APL, and my current language is Haskell. I'm a PhD mathematician. Luckily, I was trained
by Syzygies 7y ago
My first language (not counting Basic or Fortran on punched cards) was APL, and my current language is Haskell. I'm a PhD mathematician. Luckily, I was trained far enough down the street from MIT to escape their Lisp world view, so we coded our computer algebra system in C, and it was fast enough to succeed and bring us tenure. Today, we'd choose Haskell.
Thinking in Haskell is the same feeling as thinking about math research. I know mathematicians who can only code in Haskell.
The trouble with discussing languages online is it's harder to assess if each party has actually used each language. The dogma in such discussions is completely "welcome to my world" familiar to me as a mathematician. We all have different opinions, and we're all sure we're right.
- codr7 7y agoHaskell is definitely one of the languages that looks most like math. Being used to math, and solving math problems, I can certainly see how that's helpful. Making the jump to stating that everyone would be better off coding math style, which is what some are desperately trying to pull off; doesn't make any sort of sense. It's remarkable how far you can get within such a rigid and formal framework. But for most messy real world problems, there are better solutions. Lisp being the most powerful invented so far.