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I agree with this, learning Haskell was transformative for me. It changed the way I approached problems in every other language. I treat learning it as one of

I agree with this, learning Haskell was transformative for me. It changed the way I approached problems in every other language. I treat learning it as one of the 2 or 3 things that has most influenced my development skills. But the truth is that I still don't feel comfortable writing anything more than toy apps in Haskell. I'm not really sure how to unit test things when I'm passing complex monad transformers around. I feel like I'm just guessing at best practices for arranging, say, a website of moderate complexity. There's tons of resources for learning the language itself, but very few on actually applying it successfully to anything other than a single purpose command line app.

agumonkey 6y ago
I'm probably a lot lower than you but I feel I hit a similar wall. I naturally end up writing a function soup which feels super dirty.. as much as I dislike the term (uml-overload) there's a need for architecture that I don't know how to address in FP.
zetalemur 6y ago
> I treat learning it as one of the 2 or 3 things that has most influenced my development skills. If you don't mind, what were the other 1 or 2 things?
- rrobukef 6y ago
  Personally: Prolog in addition to Haskell and SCIP.
- DavidWoof 6y ago
  Unit testing and TDD Code Complete 1st edition Maybe Domain driven design as well
  - zetalemur 6y ago
    Thanks for the answer.
pwm 6y ago
From my experience the key to becoming comfortable writing "real" apps in Haskell, or any language for that matter, is to just do it and keep at it. The easiest path, and the one I chose, is to do it full time as your day job. When you write Haskell all day every day you'll get comfortable with it surprisingly quickly. You also realise that it's not a panacea, it's just a language but a damn fine one at that. You can (and should!) write super simple, unceremonial Haskell the vast majority of the time if you are writing "real" apps as opposed to pushing theoretical boundaries. Re code architecture and arranging code - It's not that different from what you'd do in any other language and it's more of a domain question (a webapp?, a game?) then a language one. If and when you change your mind though to move things around/re-architecture your code that is when Haskell really shines. Compiler assisted refactoring is one of the superpowers. It's like having google maps in a foreign city, it guides you to whatever your destination is.

agumonkey 6y ago

I'm probably a lot lower than you but I feel I hit a similar wall. I naturally end up writing a function soup which feels super dirty.. as much as I dislike the term (uml-overload) there's a need for architecture that I don't know how to address in FP.

zetalemur 6y ago

> I treat learning it as one of the 2 or 3 things that has most influenced my development skills. If you don't mind, what were the other 1 or 2 things?

rrobukef 6y ago
Personally: Prolog in addition to Haskell and SCIP.
DavidWoof 6y ago
Unit testing and TDD Code Complete 1st edition Maybe Domain driven design as well
- zetalemur 6y ago
  Thanks for the answer.

pwm 6y ago

From my experience the key to becoming comfortable writing "real" apps in Haskell, or any language for that matter, is to just do it and keep at it. The easiest path, and the one I chose, is to do it full time as your day job. When you write Haskell all day every day you'll get comfortable with it surprisingly quickly. You also realise that it's not a panacea, it's just a language but a damn fine one at that. You can (and should!) write super simple, unceremonial Haskell the vast majority of the time if you are writing "real" apps as opposed to pushing theoretical boundaries. Re code architecture and arranging code - It's not that different from what you'd do in any other language and it's more of a domain question (a webapp?, a game?) then a language one. If and when you change your mind though to move things around/re-architecture your code that is when Haskell really shines. Compiler assisted refactoring is one of the superpowers. It's like having google maps in a foreign city, it guides you to whatever your destination is.