> I'm not sure if they produce better software I will say that of the very few pieces of software I actually actively like (as opposed to begrudgingly tolerate

> I'm not sure if they produce better software I will say that of the very few pieces of software I actually actively like (as opposed to begrudgingly tolerate), most are either written in Haskell or C. C software includes openSSH, wireguard. Haskell software includes pandoc, xmonad. So whether it's a property of the language itself or a second-order social filter effect (I suspect the former), it does seem to result in relatively good software. I think it's more poignant with libraries; the quality of libraries in the haskell ecosystem is incredibly good (although many people seem to dislike how the haskell ecosystem deals with e.g. documentation: by not writing as much). > I always come away feeling that Haskell makes the simple things tough, and the tough things beyond my reach I would say it makes (very) simple things a lot harder, but very hard things much easier. I like to think of it in terms of asymptotics. If you consider a mapping `f` from problem complexity to program complexity, python is something like `f(x) = 0.001x^10`. Very simple problems have very simple solutions, but complex problems have very (intractably) difficult-to-manage solutions. Haskell is something like `f(x) = 1 x^3`. Very simple problems become harder, but once you have a sufficiently complicated problem, the polynomial factors dominate and haskell becomes much simpler. The higher constant-factor cost allows you to handle vastly higher asymptotic problem complexity.