5 ms·

Amen, I've spent the last 3 years of my career working on an increasingly complicated Perl project and frankly, I've had enough. My pet projects now are all Has

Amen, I've spent the last 3 years of my career working on an increasingly complicated Perl project and frankly, I've had enough. My pet projects now are all Haskell and I can't believe how fun it is. I spend most of my time these days fixing bugs and regressions due to the sheer scale of the project, and I'm a running meme at work for saying "a type checker could have caught that!". I can't imagine going back to a dynamic language now.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Are you having fun because you switched to a statically typed language or are you having fun because you switched to a functional language? Would you be having less fun had you chosen Clojure?
- cageface 14y ago
  I started a parallel implementation of a bunch of machine learning algorithms in Clojure and Scala. I figured the Clojure version would pull out ahead thanks to my previous lisp experience and lisp's history in that domain. I was very surprised to discover that my Scala code was a lot easier to understand and maintain and had fewer bugs.
  - gnuvince 14y ago
    What do you attribute this to? The static typing of Scala or the libraries that you use?
    - cageface 14y ago
      Definitely typing. I wasn't using any libraries.
- ocharles 14y ago
  You know, I'm probably having fun because of both. I love the type system Haskell gives me for exploring a problem space without diving into a solution. I am enjoying working in a functional language because it forces me to work in really small pieces and slot them together. I try and do this in Perl too, of course, but it can sometimes be easier to just cargo cult some things and forget to come back to them. I think what I enjoy most is the type system though, and the ability to make massive refactorings until stuff compiles. 9 times out of 10, things just work after that.

5 ms·

Amen, I've spent the last 3 years of my career working on an increasingly complicated Perl project and frankly, I've had enough. My pet projects now are all Has

by ocharles 14y ago

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Are you having fun because you switched to a statically typed language or are you having fun because you switched to a functional language? Would you be having less fun had you chosen Clojure?
- cageface 14y ago
  I started a parallel implementation of a bunch of machine learning algorithms in Clojure and Scala. I figured the Clojure version would pull out ahead thanks to my previous lisp experience and lisp's history in that domain. I was very surprised to discover that my Scala code was a lot easier to understand and maintain and had fewer bugs.
  - gnuvince 14y ago
    What do you attribute this to? The static typing of Scala or the libraries that you use?
    - cageface 14y ago
      Definitely typing. I wasn't using any libraries.
- ocharles 14y ago
  You know, I'm probably having fun because of both. I love the type system Haskell gives me for exploring a problem space without diving into a solution. I am enjoying working in a functional language because it forces me to work in really small pieces and slot them together. I try and do this in Perl too, of course, but it can sometimes be easier to just cargo cult some things and forget to come back to them. I think what I enjoy most is the type system though, and the ability to make massive refactorings until stuff compiles. 9 times out of 10, things just work after that.