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I've worked in a pretty wide range of languages. I think I know "unfamiliar" and I can tell it apart from "arcane". OP claims that "this article will emphasize

I've worked in a pretty wide range of languages. I think I know "unfamiliar" and I can tell it apart from "arcane". OP claims that "this article will emphasize writing easy to grok, maintainable code". The definition of "easy to grok" is not "once you've bought into the entire mindset, this will be obvious to you".

jeremyjh 7y ago
"Easy to grok" definitely means "for experienced Haskell programmers". That is who the article is written for. It doesn't matter how many other languages you've used - they are mostly the same as each other and Haskell is really quite different. Your lack of familiarity is not evidence of a defect.
- microtherion 7y ago
  > "Easy to grok" definitely means "for experienced Haskell programmers" Which is pretty much the definition of "arcane": "known to a small circle of initiates"
mbrodersen 7y ago
> I've worked in a pretty wide range of languages Which languages are those? If the answer is "N flavours of imperative/OO languages" (like C/C++/Java/C#/Ruby/Javascript) then you really haven't worked in languages different enough for you to truly learn anything new. The rule is simple: if learning a new language is easy, then there isn't much new in the language for you to learn (except a different flavour of syntax or whatever).
- microtherion 7y ago
  True, most of my work was in imperative/OO languages, though the imperativeness ranged from "global variables for everything" to "No global state, predominantly immutable objects, predominantly single assignment". But I've also worked in Prolog and SQL, and dabbled in languages like UNITY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITY_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITY_(programming_language), so I have some degree of openness to different paradigms.
  - mbrodersen 7y ago
    > so I have some degree of openness to different paradigms. That's great! I truly believe that learning new hard stuff is how a software developer goes from average to great. If you learn a little bit every day then after 5 years you will be SO much better than the average guy/gal sitting next to you.

jeremyjh 7y ago

"Easy to grok" definitely means "for experienced Haskell programmers". That is who the article is written for. It doesn't matter how many other languages you've used - they are mostly the same as each other and Haskell is really quite different. Your lack of familiarity is not evidence of a defect.

microtherion 7y ago
> "Easy to grok" definitely means "for experienced Haskell programmers" Which is pretty much the definition of "arcane": "known to a small circle of initiates"

mbrodersen 7y ago

> I've worked in a pretty wide range of languages Which languages are those? If the answer is "N flavours of imperative/OO languages" (like C/C++/Java/C#/Ruby/Javascript) then you really haven't worked in languages different enough for you to truly learn anything new. The rule is simple: if learning a new language is easy, then there isn't much new in the language for you to learn (except a different flavour of syntax or whatever).

microtherion 7y ago
True, most of my work was in imperative/OO languages, though the imperativeness ranged from "global variables for everything" to "No global state, predominantly immutable objects, predominantly single assignment". But I've also worked in Prolog and SQL, and dabbled in languages like UNITY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITY_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITY_(programming_language), so I have some degree of openness to different paradigms.
- mbrodersen 7y ago
  > so I have some degree of openness to different paradigms. That's great! I truly believe that learning new hard stuff is how a software developer goes from average to great. If you learn a little bit every day then after 5 years you will be SO much better than the average guy/gal sitting next to you.