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I know that this is the wrong mentality, but I want to become an expert in a language that is as good as it can be. Can Go evolve to address some of these issue

I know that this is the wrong mentality, but I want to become an expert in a language that is as good as it can be. Can Go evolve to address some of these issues? Would it even be go anymore? I tried Googling, but why are Scala and Haskell automatically classified as "academic"? Is there value in learning them purely for that reason? I walked through some Haskell tutorials after reading this, but I'm rather stare at the sun than read Scala.

jamesbritt 15y ago
I tried Googling, but why are Scala and Haskell automatically classified as "academic"? It's what people say when asked about languages they don't use or understand. I.e., damning with faint praise.
flogic 15y ago
I wouldn't call either Haskell or Scala academic. However, here a quick shoot from the hip stereotyping of each. Scala gives me the impression it wants to be Java's C++. C++ is largely an extension of C. Sure you can use it entirely differently than C, but that C-ish core is still there. And Scala gives me that same feeling in relation to Java. On the other hand, Haskell suffers from being a "pure" language. I mean "pure" in a wider sense than "functional". I mean "pure" as in being built entirely around a concept. For Haskell that concept is "functional programming". For Lisp, it's the "cons cell". And for Forth, it's the "stack machine". The benefit to being a "pure" language is there are all sorts of synergies you can take advantage of. The down side is when something doesn't quite line up, it gets ugly fast.
- Peaker 15y ago
  I think Haskell accommodates imperative programming so well that it surpasses many imperative languages and beats them in their own game. I also think the name "purity" is misleading. In the context of Haskell it means: * Referential Transparency: references to things are indistinguishable from those things. This helps a lot with equational reasoning about code, optimizations and all sorts of mechanical refactorings. I don't think there are significant disadvantages here. * Typed effects: Haskell types its effects and requires explicit composition of effects and not just of values. This, in turn, turns "side effects" simply into "effects" because they are so explicit. This has some disadvantages, mainly regarding learning curve. If you get a pure function type, you are guaranteed many of useful things about its behavior. The flip side of this, is that if you want to change a pure function to have effects and break these guarantees, you will have to change its type and somewhat restructure it. Haskell doesn't "get ugly fast" in any circumstance I've seen. It accomodates an extremely wide array of paradigms as pretty encodings on top of its own functional paradigm.
  - DanWaterworth 15y ago
    I completely agree, in fact I've been trying to show people how well Haskell can encode imperative programs. See https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/why_haskell_is_suited_to_io.md https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/why_... and https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/composable_database_logic.md https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/comp...
__rkaup__ 15y ago
It came from inside a bunch of universities, and it's not hard to find papers talking about things like "monads" or "arrows" mentioning things like "monoids", which are mainly Haskell things. (But monoids aren't really Haskell things.)
davidmathers 15y ago
I tried Googling, but why are Scala and Haskell automatically classified as "academic"? Because they are inspired by 20th century mathematics rather than 18th century mathematics. This quote from wikipedia explains it: These developments of the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of 20th century were systematically exposed in Bartel van der Waerden's Moderne algebra, the two-volume monograph published in 1930–1931 that forever changed for the mathematical world the meaning of the word algebra from the theory of equations to the theory of algebraic structures. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra The academic languages are the ones aware of that change in the meaning of the word algebra. Everyone learns Euler in high school. Nobody learns Mac Lane.

jamesbritt 15y ago

I tried Googling, but why are Scala and Haskell automatically classified as "academic"? It's what people say when asked about languages they don't use or understand. I.e., damning with faint praise.

flogic 15y ago

I wouldn't call either Haskell or Scala academic. However, here a quick shoot from the hip stereotyping of each. Scala gives me the impression it wants to be Java's C++. C++ is largely an extension of C. Sure you can use it entirely differently than C, but that C-ish core is still there. And Scala gives me that same feeling in relation to Java. On the other hand, Haskell suffers from being a "pure" language. I mean "pure" in a wider sense than "functional". I mean "pure" as in being built entirely around a concept. For Haskell that concept is "functional programming". For Lisp, it's the "cons cell". And for Forth, it's the "stack machine". The benefit to being a "pure" language is there are all sorts of synergies you can take advantage of. The down side is when something doesn't quite line up, it gets ugly fast.

Peaker 15y ago
I think Haskell accommodates imperative programming so well that it surpasses many imperative languages and beats them in their own game. I also think the name "purity" is misleading. In the context of Haskell it means: * Referential Transparency: references to things are indistinguishable from those things. This helps a lot with equational reasoning about code, optimizations and all sorts of mechanical refactorings. I don't think there are significant disadvantages here. * Typed effects: Haskell types its effects and requires explicit composition of effects and not just of values. This, in turn, turns "side effects" simply into "effects" because they are so explicit. This has some disadvantages, mainly regarding learning curve. If you get a pure function type, you are guaranteed many of useful things about its behavior. The flip side of this, is that if you want to change a pure function to have effects and break these guarantees, you will have to change its type and somewhat restructure it. Haskell doesn't "get ugly fast" in any circumstance I've seen. It accomodates an extremely wide array of paradigms as pretty encodings on top of its own functional paradigm.
- DanWaterworth 15y ago
  I completely agree, in fact I've been trying to show people how well Haskell can encode imperative programs. See https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/why_haskell_is_suited_to_io.md https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/why_... and https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/composable_database_logic.md https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/comp...

__rkaup__ 15y ago

It came from inside a bunch of universities, and it's not hard to find papers talking about things like "monads" or "arrows" mentioning things like "monoids", which are mainly Haskell things. (But monoids aren't really Haskell things.)

davidmathers 15y ago

I tried Googling, but why are Scala and Haskell automatically classified as "academic"? Because they are inspired by 20th century mathematics rather than 18th century mathematics. This quote from wikipedia explains it: These developments of the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of 20th century were systematically exposed in Bartel van der Waerden's Moderne algebra, the two-volume monograph published in 1930–1931 that forever changed for the mathematical world the meaning of the word algebra from the theory of equations to the theory of algebraic structures. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra The academic languages are the ones aware of that change in the meaning of the word algebra. Everyone learns Euler in high school. Nobody learns Mac Lane.