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I don't think that quote is complete enough though. If you really believe that programming languages are just tools for building programs (in particular "useful

by WJW 6y ago

I don't think that quote is complete enough though. If you really believe that programming languages are just tools for building programs (in particular "useful" programs that make money) then yes, Haskell has not much to offer you over PHP or Ruby and other languages in that vein. On the other hand if you are interested in research, exploring the extent of the design space for programming languages and what you can (or can't) express in them, then Haskell is an excellent language for you. Both for the community of like-minded researchers and for the flexibility of the language/compiler itself. On a wider scale, I've always liked https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ as an explanation for why this topic comes up again and again and again. The writer of the article is more of a "type 3" programmer. He wants to build a house but does not care much which tools he uses as long as they don't get in the way. It is the end result they are interested in, not the process. Haskell is, by design as a research language, more process oriented than result oriented. And yes, you can still get results with it as IHP and SC and Jane Street have shown. But they seem to be the exceptions that show the norm.

_query 6y ago
I think for making stuff the speed of iteration is the most important metric. Haskell is great for this because: - In dev mode it's super fast, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTjjDo57B8g&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTjjDo57B8g&feature=youtu.be - You can change features of your product easier thanks to the type system. Doing a big refactoring with rails always adds many bugs. With haskell you spend less time on doing these kind of changes because the compiler tells you what needs to be changed.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  > With haskell you spend less time on doing these kind of changes because the compiler tells you what needs to be changed. This. I think what all the other folks in this thread that are just throwing shade on Haskell after struggling through a tutorial (admittedly, it can be pedagogically difficult to introduce concepts compared to Python or Ruby or JS, etc). Perhaps Haskell will never beat C++ & friends (Rust, C, maybe Swift?) at performance, but what it will beat is the myriad other web apps written in Python and Ruby, which I bet a lot of folks on this site use. All that it lacks are the same levels of batteries-included frameworks like Django and Rails. I can't even begin to mentally enumerate the number of times I've seen Python (and, much less often, Ruby) codebases at the places I've worked that were critical to the infrastructure (often having been the outgrowth of the initial POC that got the product started) that were mysterious Monoliths, which if you tried to change would be some Hydra situation: for every bug fixed, another 2 or 3 or 10 are created. Perhaps if a team of really well-disciplined Python professionals can go 0-60 very quickly due to the language's flexibility, but it counts on that discipline being maintained going forward in the code, and training new hires or hiring only experts to work on the project. Haskell is basically like encoding this discipline into the compiler itself. You don't have to spend time praying that your test suite is adequate (although tests are still needed) or picking over the minutiae of some pull request trying to remember all the things that the `|` operator may have been overloaded with from that "coding ninja" who decided to put esoteric things in your Python codebase did before he got poached by some other company and peaced out without documenting anything. For all of the pitfalls that Haskell has from a language perspective (which can often be avoided by using an alternate prelude), the advantages when compared to other modern languages made for "moving fast and breaking things" are very prominent: I no longer have to wonder what the `data_object` parameter of my `update_callback_param_cache` method is supposed to be and waste minutes of my life desperately grepping through the code or, if possible, `pdb`ing my way through a live version and trying to trigger that code path.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Your example is live updating html in a browser, NOT live updating the type system. In other words, your evidence is trivial, unrelated to your main claim, and unconvincing.
UncleMeat 6y ago
> If you really believe that programming languages are just tools for building programs (in particular "useful" programs that make money) then yes, Haskell has not much to offer you over PHP or Ruby and other languages in that vein. I'd agree with this generally. During grad school I loved hacking my research on haskell. But this doesn't seem to be a consistent claim from the community. It'd be helpful if the core maintainers published this somewhere. Because I consistently get haskellers telling me that I'd be more productive as an engineer and my programs would have fewer errors if only I worked in Haskell. Some other languages do have this sort of vision statement (or, at least a fairly well implied one) that makes it clear what they are offering and what they aren't. C++ wants to give you speed and flexibility without overhead for things you aren't using. That's been consistent for decades.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  > Because I consistently get haskellers telling me that I'd be more productive as an engineer and my programs would have fewer errors if only I worked in Haskell. i still think it's true i have worked in haskell and i currently get paid to write more mainstream languages. the mainstream languages are literal wastes of my time in comparison. not my money tho, so i'm fine with my employer paying me to waste time.

by WJW 6y ago

_query 6y ago

I think for making stuff the speed of iteration is the most important metric. Haskell is great for this because: - In dev mode it's super fast, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTjjDo57B8g&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTjjDo57B8g&feature=youtu.be - You can change features of your product easier thanks to the type system. Doing a big refactoring with rails always adds many bugs. With haskell you spend less time on doing these kind of changes because the compiler tells you what needs to be changed.

_huayra_ 6y ago
> With haskell you spend less time on doing these kind of changes because the compiler tells you what needs to be changed. This. I think what all the other folks in this thread that are just throwing shade on Haskell after struggling through a tutorial (admittedly, it can be pedagogically difficult to introduce concepts compared to Python or Ruby or JS, etc). Perhaps Haskell will never beat C++ & friends (Rust, C, maybe Swift?) at performance, but what it will beat is the myriad other web apps written in Python and Ruby, which I bet a lot of folks on this site use. All that it lacks are the same levels of batteries-included frameworks like Django and Rails. I can't even begin to mentally enumerate the number of times I've seen Python (and, much less often, Ruby) codebases at the places I've worked that were critical to the infrastructure (often having been the outgrowth of the initial POC that got the product started) that were mysterious Monoliths, which if you tried to change would be some Hydra situation: for every bug fixed, another 2 or 3 or 10 are created. Perhaps if a team of really well-disciplined Python professionals can go 0-60 very quickly due to the language's flexibility, but it counts on that discipline being maintained going forward in the code, and training new hires or hiring only experts to work on the project. Haskell is basically like encoding this discipline into the compiler itself. You don't have to spend time praying that your test suite is adequate (although tests are still needed) or picking over the minutiae of some pull request trying to remember all the things that the `|` operator may have been overloaded with from that "coding ninja" who decided to put esoteric things in your Python codebase did before he got poached by some other company and peaced out without documenting anything. For all of the pitfalls that Haskell has from a language perspective (which can often be avoided by using an alternate prelude), the advantages when compared to other modern languages made for "moving fast and breaking things" are very prominent: I no longer have to wonder what the `data_object` parameter of my `update_callback_param_cache` method is supposed to be and waste minutes of my life desperately grepping through the code or, if possible, `pdb`ing my way through a live version and trying to trigger that code path.
javajosh 6y ago
Your example is live updating html in a browser, NOT live updating the type system. In other words, your evidence is trivial, unrelated to your main claim, and unconvincing.

UncleMeat 6y ago

> If you really believe that programming languages are just tools for building programs (in particular "useful" programs that make money) then yes, Haskell has not much to offer you over PHP or Ruby and other languages in that vein. I'd agree with this generally. During grad school I loved hacking my research on haskell. But this doesn't seem to be a consistent claim from the community. It'd be helpful if the core maintainers published this somewhere. Because I consistently get haskellers telling me that I'd be more productive as an engineer and my programs would have fewer errors if only I worked in Haskell. Some other languages do have this sort of vision statement (or, at least a fairly well implied one) that makes it clear what they are offering and what they aren't. C++ wants to give you speed and flexibility without overhead for things you aren't using. That's been consistent for decades.

whateveracct 6y ago
> Because I consistently get haskellers telling me that I'd be more productive as an engineer and my programs would have fewer errors if only I worked in Haskell. i still think it's true i have worked in haskell and i currently get paid to write more mainstream languages. the mainstream languages are literal wastes of my time in comparison. not my money tho, so i'm fine with my employer paying me to waste time.