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I completely agree with your first statement, but I have no idea how you get to your final statement from that. Ocaml and haskell are both on the "shoot self a

I completely agree with your first statement, but I have no idea how you get to your final statement from that. Ocaml and haskell are both on the "shoot self anywhere protection" end of the language spectrum. I used ocaml for a couple years and program in haskell for a living, and I assure you I am not in the top 5% of programmers.

TylerE 14y ago
Well, they are, but they fall into the "Designed for Top 5% of Programmers" trap. Basically - it's a balance - don't be too dumb, but don't be too clever either. I'd submit Python as being solidly in the middle ground here.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  I still don't understand what you mean. How are they designed for the "top 5%"? And how does that mesh with the fact that I am certainly not in the top 5%, and yet program in haskell for a living? Ocaml in particular is very simple and easy to learn and use, haskell is only more difficult in the sense that it is a higher level language than say, python, so obviously you need to learn higher level abstractions. That's like saying python is written for some elite class of programmers because it has "strings" and C doesn't.
  - TylerE 14y ago
    I would posit that you are in the Top 5%. Can you imagine your average PHP web dev trying to grok monads? In the at-times echo chamber around here it's easy to forget just how many people make a living righting VBScript macros, Java, or Cold Fusion, or whatever non-sexy language you want to name.
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      >Can you imagine your average PHP web dev trying to grok monads Your average PHP web dev is not the cutoff for the 95th percentile. But yes, I can imagine them trying to understand monads. I have also observed them succeeding at understanding monads. They aren't hard to learn, just something you need to learn. Being able to learn simple things doesn't make you the top 5%.
    - jasomill 14y ago
      "Cargo cult" programmers don't grok strong typing or lexical scoping either, but that's not a good argument for a weakly typed, dynamically scoped language.

TylerE 14y ago

Well, they are, but they fall into the "Designed for Top 5% of Programmers" trap. Basically - it's a balance - don't be too dumb, but don't be too clever either. I'd submit Python as being solidly in the middle ground here.

papsosouid 14y ago
I still don't understand what you mean. How are they designed for the "top 5%"? And how does that mesh with the fact that I am certainly not in the top 5%, and yet program in haskell for a living? Ocaml in particular is very simple and easy to learn and use, haskell is only more difficult in the sense that it is a higher level language than say, python, so obviously you need to learn higher level abstractions. That's like saying python is written for some elite class of programmers because it has "strings" and C doesn't.
- TylerE 14y ago
  I would posit that you are in the Top 5%. Can you imagine your average PHP web dev trying to grok monads? In the at-times echo chamber around here it's easy to forget just how many people make a living righting VBScript macros, Java, or Cold Fusion, or whatever non-sexy language you want to name.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    >Can you imagine your average PHP web dev trying to grok monads Your average PHP web dev is not the cutoff for the 95th percentile. But yes, I can imagine them trying to understand monads. I have also observed them succeeding at understanding monads. They aren't hard to learn, just something you need to learn. Being able to learn simple things doesn't make you the top 5%.
  - jasomill 14y ago
    "Cargo cult" programmers don't grok strong typing or lexical scoping either, but that's not a good argument for a weakly typed, dynamically scoped language.