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You don't have to use a language to benefit from its existence. Haskell is a weird language that nobody* uses in production, but it's where a lot of functional
by franga2000 5y ago
You don't have to use a language to benefit from its existence. Haskell is a weird language that nobody* uses in production, but it's where a lot of functional programming concepts were refined and ultimately made their way into mainstream languages. I use functional programming tools in Java and JS very often and they only exist because many people tried Haskell, saw the potential of this new* paradigm and implemented parts of it into their environments.
Similarly, having been forced to learn Prolog in university, I now have a completely different view of solving problems. And while I'll surely never touch Prolog again, this new perspective allows me to write much better code in some cases, despite working in a completely different language.
- hiepph 5y agoI second this. It's always about learning the mindset even if you don't use it for real life. Same for learning mathematics, music, philosophy, etc. It becomes your mental model to apply to other aspects of life.
- ashtonkem 5y agoI used to argue this. Then I watched multiple engineers under me and next to me ignore this argument in favor of focusing on distributed system design and clear communication. The results have persuaded me that I was wrong, and they were right. In the end the most effective people around me are capable of designing a system and breaking it down effectively for other engineers to build. Most of them have no idea what things like Monads and Functors are, and they’re no less effective for it.