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Idris is great, its design is super impressive, and it expanded my mind tremendously in terms of what is possible in programming. We can and should ask much mor

by rictic 7y ago

Idris is great, its design is super impressive, and it expanded my mind tremendously in terms of what is possible in programming. We can and should ask much more of our type systems! It is also way less mature than Haskell, and someone trying to learn it will run into many issues as a result. I mean, read the linked blog post! Needing to regularly restart one's editor, long compile times for even short programs, and difficulties with installation are all issues I also ran into. (Also, strong agree about the book. It's really well written, and all around excellent)

dwohnitmok 7y ago
I would second this. If you've never done pure functional programming before I would hesitate to recommend Idris as your first foray simply because of ergonomic issues with the tooling. Regardless of whether you think Idris the language is suitable for a beginner, it's not a fun experience to deal with the landscape of abandoned libraries, editor integration issues, compiler bugs, etc. if you are already struggling to understand some of the basic principles behind the language. The only exception is if you use it purely as a companion to the Type-Driven Development book. As long as you don't stray too far from the book you generally won't run into any of these other issues and it's more plausible to think of it as a first foray into pure functional programming.
tluyben2 7y ago
Idris 2 is supposed to be better in that regard. I could not see in the article if 1 or 2 was used but I think it was 1; 2 is a lot faster and fixed a lot of issues from 1.
- moomin 7y ago
  But there won’t be a book.
  - lodi 7y ago
    I believe the plan is to release an Idris2 edition of the book. The Idris2 repository currently has all of the book code as part of its test suite and is making progress towards compiling all of it (currently 12 of the 15 chapters).

by rictic 7y ago

dwohnitmok 7y ago

I would second this. If you've never done pure functional programming before I would hesitate to recommend Idris as your first foray simply because of ergonomic issues with the tooling. Regardless of whether you think Idris the language is suitable for a beginner, it's not a fun experience to deal with the landscape of abandoned libraries, editor integration issues, compiler bugs, etc. if you are already struggling to understand some of the basic principles behind the language. The only exception is if you use it purely as a companion to the Type-Driven Development book. As long as you don't stray too far from the book you generally won't run into any of these other issues and it's more plausible to think of it as a first foray into pure functional programming.

tluyben2 7y ago

Idris 2 is supposed to be better in that regard. I could not see in the article if 1 or 2 was used but I think it was 1; 2 is a lot faster and fixed a lot of issues from 1.

moomin 7y ago
But there won’t be a book.
- lodi 7y ago
  I believe the plan is to release an Idris2 edition of the book. The Idris2 repository currently has all of the book code as part of its test suite and is making progress towards compiling all of it (currently 12 of the 15 chapters).