3 ms·

$ is short for “put everything to the right inside parentheses” and \x -> y defines an anonymous function. Why do you expect to understand the syntax of a lang

by nequo 2y ago

$ is short for “put everything to the right inside parentheses” and \x -> y defines an anonymous function. Why do you expect to understand the syntax of a language you never studied?

karmakurtisaani 2y ago
> $ is short for “put everything to the right inside parentheses” There's, you know, also the actual parentheses that everyone already knows. > Why do you expect to understand the syntax of a language you never studied? Because most languages have a syntax that you can grasp almost immediately, since they conform to a common syntax, rather than invent everything all over again. Then you can focus on the actual features of the language and are not bogged down by syntax.
- nequo 2y ago
  It doesn't take more than two minutes to understand what $ and \x -> y do, and if you start writing out those parentheses, you will also realize why $ is part of idiomatic Haskell.
- tasuki 2y ago
  You know, perhaps Haskell isn't the right language for you. That's fine. Why should it conform to your syntactic preferences?
- eru 2y ago
  > There's, you know, also the actual parentheses that everyone already knows. Those are also available, and are legal syntax in Haskell. > Because most languages have a syntax that you can grasp almost immediately, since they conform to a common syntax, rather than invent everything all over again. I hope you don't count C's `for(something, something; something; something) {` as part of that intuitive bunch? Btw, Haskell didn't re-invent the wheel for most of its syntax: they stuck to the common and already established syntax of the ML family of languages. ML is from 1973. (For comparison, Wikipedia says C is from 1972.)
  - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
    > Those are also available, and are legal syntax in Haskell. I don't especially like the idea of making multiple notations for the same thing, to be honest. > I hope you don't count C's `for(something, something; something; something) {` as part of that intuitive bunch? Not my favorite, but at least widely used. I find the style in for example Rust the most easy on the eye. > Btw, Haskell didn't re-invent the wheel for most of its syntax Yeah I actually suspected this was the case.
    - eru 2y ago
      > I don't especially like the idea of making multiple notations for the same thing, to be honest. I can appreciate that sentiment, but I'm afraid the designers of Haskell had a different approach there. There often a few different ways to express something. But at least they can often be understood as thin syntactic sugaring of one into the other. It's not like C++ or Perl (or even Ruby with its different types of closures) where you have tons of overlapping ways to express something, and they are all subtly different. > I find the style in for example Rust the most easy on the eye. I'm not sure about easy-on-the-eye, but I find Rust mostly quite bearable, too.
      - tome 2y ago
        > > I don't especially like the idea of making multiple notations for the same thing, to be honest. > > I can appreciate that sentiment, but I'm afraid the designers of Haskell had a different approach there. It's also very difficult to achieve in practice. According to the Zen of Python "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it" but I don't think even Python lives up to that.
        eru 2y ago
        Yes, it's only aspirational in Python, too.

by nequo 2y ago

$ is short for “put everything to the right inside parentheses” and \x -> y defines an anonymous function. Why do you expect to understand the syntax of a language you never studied?

karmakurtisaani 2y ago

> $ is short for “put everything to the right inside parentheses” There's, you know, also the actual parentheses that everyone already knows. > Why do you expect to understand the syntax of a language you never studied? Because most languages have a syntax that you can grasp almost immediately, since they conform to a common syntax, rather than invent everything all over again. Then you can focus on the actual features of the language and are not bogged down by syntax.

nequo 2y ago
It doesn't take more than two minutes to understand what $ and \x -> y do, and if you start writing out those parentheses, you will also realize why $ is part of idiomatic Haskell.
tasuki 2y ago
You know, perhaps Haskell isn't the right language for you. That's fine. Why should it conform to your syntactic preferences?
eru 2y ago
> There's, you know, also the actual parentheses that everyone already knows. Those are also available, and are legal syntax in Haskell. > Because most languages have a syntax that you can grasp almost immediately, since they conform to a common syntax, rather than invent everything all over again. I hope you don't count C's `for(something, something; something; something) {` as part of that intuitive bunch? Btw, Haskell didn't re-invent the wheel for most of its syntax: they stuck to the common and already established syntax of the ML family of languages. ML is from 1973. (For comparison, Wikipedia says C is from 1972.)
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  > Those are also available, and are legal syntax in Haskell. I don't especially like the idea of making multiple notations for the same thing, to be honest. > I hope you don't count C's `for(something, something; something; something) {` as part of that intuitive bunch? Not my favorite, but at least widely used. I find the style in for example Rust the most easy on the eye. > Btw, Haskell didn't re-invent the wheel for most of its syntax Yeah I actually suspected this was the case.
  - eru 2y ago
    > I don't especially like the idea of making multiple notations for the same thing, to be honest. I can appreciate that sentiment, but I'm afraid the designers of Haskell had a different approach there. There often a few different ways to express something. But at least they can often be understood as thin syntactic sugaring of one into the other. It's not like C++ or Perl (or even Ruby with its different types of closures) where you have tons of overlapping ways to express something, and they are all subtly different. > I find the style in for example Rust the most easy on the eye. I'm not sure about easy-on-the-eye, but I find Rust mostly quite bearable, too.
    - tome 2y ago
      > > I don't especially like the idea of making multiple notations for the same thing, to be honest. > > I can appreciate that sentiment, but I'm afraid the designers of Haskell had a different approach there. It's also very difficult to achieve in practice. According to the Zen of Python "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it" but I don't think even Python lives up to that.
      - eru 2y ago
        Yes, it's only aspirational in Python, too.