8 ms·

Careful about sweeping generalizations... The internet has shown what is possible in "one line" of python, and I've seen this in the real world scarily enough!

jakear 7y ago
What you can accomplish in 5 lines of “ready for production, maintainable, easily understandable by coworkers” python is vastly less than what you can accomplish in 5 lines of similarly constrained Haskell.
- thedufer 7y ago
  Unfortunately, a lot of work there is done by the Haskell community having utterly absurd standards for those things. I work in a different functional programming language, and you would not believe the amount of time I spend convincing new hires with Haskell backgrounds to spend the extra few characters to expand out the unreadable point-free/single-character-names style that Haskell folks prefer.
  - jakear 7y ago
    Oh believe me, I’d believe. My Haskell background comes from building upon academic proofs of concept during a stint at CSAIL. Never again.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      That world has very little to do with commerical Haskell though, now does it? Why, we even discourage the use of Singletons and if you import a unification library everyone will immediately demand to know why.
  - chowells 7y ago
    Has it ever occurred to you that Haskell programmers prefer single-letter variable names in some contexts because it makes the code better? Perhaps it is not the children who are wrong.
    - anchpop 7y ago
      Right, I find pointfree style to be much more readable than pointful, I expect the GP would too if they became used to it
      - jakear 7y ago
        The problem is you can’t bring that change about in a corporate setting by just doing things your own way and hoping your coworkers catch up. I think that’s more what GGP was having issue with.
      - dllthomas 7y ago
        IME, this isn't consistent. If you can write it as `f . g . h` then point-free will probably be clearest. If you need to use each argument in a few places, I find going all the way to point-free is usually much less clear than some intermediate points or even the fully pointful version.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      By the comment, the GP is not a Haskell developer and those people are not programming in Haskell. So, even though it is well known that short named variables and point free syntax often improve the readability of Haskell code, it probably does not improve the readability of his code.
      - thedufer 7y ago
        I work in a statically-typed FP language. Unless type classes are the magic feature that make point-free viable, it's hard to see how that could be the difference.
    - thedufer 7y ago
      I have spent quite a bit of time in both styles, and there's a pretty clear winner in my experience. I don't work in Haskell, but in another statically-typed FP language - maybe type classes are the feature that flip everything we know about readability from other languages?

jakear 7y ago

What you can accomplish in 5 lines of “ready for production, maintainable, easily understandable by coworkers” python is vastly less than what you can accomplish in 5 lines of similarly constrained Haskell.

thedufer 7y ago
Unfortunately, a lot of work there is done by the Haskell community having utterly absurd standards for those things. I work in a different functional programming language, and you would not believe the amount of time I spend convincing new hires with Haskell backgrounds to spend the extra few characters to expand out the unreadable point-free/single-character-names style that Haskell folks prefer.
- jakear 7y ago
  Oh believe me, I’d believe. My Haskell background comes from building upon academic proofs of concept during a stint at CSAIL. Never again.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    That world has very little to do with commerical Haskell though, now does it? Why, we even discourage the use of Singletons and if you import a unification library everyone will immediately demand to know why.
- chowells 7y ago
  Has it ever occurred to you that Haskell programmers prefer single-letter variable names in some contexts because it makes the code better? Perhaps it is not the children who are wrong.
  - anchpop 7y ago
    Right, I find pointfree style to be much more readable than pointful, I expect the GP would too if they became used to it
    - jakear 7y ago
      The problem is you can’t bring that change about in a corporate setting by just doing things your own way and hoping your coworkers catch up. I think that’s more what GGP was having issue with.
    - dllthomas 7y ago
      IME, this isn't consistent. If you can write it as `f . g . h` then point-free will probably be clearest. If you need to use each argument in a few places, I find going all the way to point-free is usually much less clear than some intermediate points or even the fully pointful version.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    By the comment, the GP is not a Haskell developer and those people are not programming in Haskell. So, even though it is well known that short named variables and point free syntax often improve the readability of Haskell code, it probably does not improve the readability of his code.
    - thedufer 7y ago
      I work in a statically-typed FP language. Unless type classes are the magic feature that make point-free viable, it's hard to see how that could be the difference.
  - thedufer 7y ago
    I have spent quite a bit of time in both styles, and there's a pretty clear winner in my experience. I don't work in Haskell, but in another statically-typed FP language - maybe type classes are the feature that flip everything we know about readability from other languages?