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I still wonder to this day why Haskell programmers want their language to be loved so much. At times it feels like that kid at the playground that spends half

I still wonder to this day why Haskell programmers want their language to be loved so much. At times it feels like that kid at the playground that spends half his time telling everyone how he's the best thing since sliced bread and cries himself to sleep at night wondering why no one will play with him and his monads. Don't get me wrong, Haskell looks like a great language with obvious qualities and I don't knock anyone for using it, to each his own, it's just the never ending publicity and proselytism that really rubs me wrong. People adopt new languages, not the other way around.

friendly_chap 14y ago
> wondering why no one will play with him That's kind of a strong statement about a language which has approx. 1000 users in it's IRC chatroom.
- VeejayRampay 14y ago
  The number of people present in the IRC channel is more of a sign that they have a very engaged and active community, which is a good sign for the language itself, for sure, but doesn't necessarily correlate to the general adoption of Haskell as a whole. A measure like http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... (by no means a perfect one, quite like speed benchmarks ironically) seems to indicate that Haskell still has a long way to go before reaching "mainstream adoption". But you're right about that statement, it was intended more as a humorous jab than a statement of absolute truth :)
  - sixbrx 14y ago
    I don't think Haskellers particularly want mainstream adoption. Adoption among library writers would suffice... :)
Swizec 14y ago
Two things I love about Haskell. 1. It is very terse/expressive. I can look at code I haven't touched in 6 months and still understand what it's doing. Perhaps because my code is newbie code and thus somewhat simple. 2. It is the only language that brings me back to the days of Turbo Pascal when the joy of coding came from coding itself, not from building cool things. A small but vital distinction. That said, I rarely get to use Haskell. For most of my tasks javascript is better suited, but haskell has affected how I write javascript to a great extent.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  You have expressed something I have been worrying about with all these new APIs and frameworks - there is a joy to coding not necessarily connected to delivering business value.
  - throwa 14y ago
    Joy is relative. What gives one person Joy might not give another joy. There just might be people who derive joy using frameworks to deliver business value who might not find joy in coding just for coding sake. For some programming is there hobby and doubles as work, so they derive joy in coding for coding sake. For other's coding is just a means to an end in their work and they have other hobbies. So every man to what gives him joy and no need to worry about those using Api's and framework to deliver value and pay bills.
- chii 14y ago
  have you tried http://roy.brianmckenna.org/ http://roy.brianmckenna.org/ ? its sort of haskell like, but compiles down to javascript, so you could use it in the browser.
- abraxasz 14y ago
  Maybe it is because I'm not a Haskell Guru, but although I love Haskell's terseness, it tends to make it very hard for me to read code I've written a while ago. I tend to get excited about cool Haskell features like Arrows, using them whenever I can, then I forget about them, and when I read my code 6 months later, it's like gibberish..
Peaker 14y ago
When you find a tool that in many ways is far better than every other tool used by the mainstream (and of course in some ways worse) you might get excited about it so you want to share the knowledge you found. Or maybe you prefer the tool you like to get more adoption so you could use it in more situations. I advocate Haskell because of those two reasons. I think that like me, many others can get enormous educational and practical benefits from learning Haskell and I'd really rather be using Haskell than e.g Python.
- VeejayRampay 14y ago
  Tons of other languages and programming styles can provide the same benefits. It doesn't have to be Haskell against Python or C++ against Erlang. We can pick, mix and match and let the best of the bunch naturally emerge.
  - Peaker 14y ago
    I don't think other languages have the same benefits of Haskell. They have other benefits but not Haskell's. Python/Ruby: very easy to learn and be productive quickly. C: high level of control over resources and easy to get good performance. Haskell: very good static guarantees about correctness. Relatively easy to get decent and good performance. Extremely educational and mind expanding, far more than say Lisp. Allows very high levels of abstraction. Great concurrency and parallelism support. Lisp: easy to extend syntax with macros and manipulate programs programmatically. All these languages have benefits, but not quite the same ones.
    - VeejayRampay 14y ago
      What about Objective Caml? Seems to fit the bill for all those metrics as well, yet for a reason that eludes me to this day, it never quite reached the kind of "street rep" that Haskell now enjoys.
      - bgilroy26 14y ago
        A lot of the OCaml community is French-speaking.
sold 14y ago
It's different. It's like you were listening to one music genre all your life and there's suddenly something new. If, say, Python was the only language with "for(each)" loops, you'd see many blog posts about that too. After I saw this, the old style of iterating by index feels so antiquated. Haskell gives the same feeling many times. It has unique features when it comes to abstraction and I feel they are the right way to program.
- rtpg 14y ago
  strangely enough, I think one of the interesting features (type classes) only ended up reappearing in Go with its interfaces (granted, only in a very limited fashion).
  - DanWaterworth 14y ago
    Go's interfaces are not like Haskell's typeclasses. Just try and write a Go interface that allows you to add two of the same things together.
    - codygman 14y ago
      What do you mean add two of the same things together exactly? If I'm not mistaken, what you are talking about is possible but I don't totally understand what you are saying. Could you provide an example?
      - btilly 14y ago
        He's talking about the inability to specify an interface that specifies functions that take two arguments of the same type. Go can't do that. You can sometimes work around it. For instance consider sorting. The natural approach is to specify a type that allows comparisons. Go can't do that. But in go you can have a collection which has a function Less(i, j int) bool that takes in two integers and compares the objects at those positions (which in turn just happen to be of the same type). But this is a limited work around, and there are plenty of cases where you can want something more flexible.
jrockway 14y ago
I'd say Haskell does one percent of the proselytising that Ruby does. You hear about it a lot on HN because people write interesting articles about it. Remember, most articles that are submitted aren't being upvoted. There's probably someone writing about how their ImmutableSet implementation for Java is the best thing ever, but it's not being upvoted because the community doesn't consider it interesting.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  What prompted this is not that I'm not fine with proselytizing, I just think that you should be even handed when you do so. False claims serve neither language or their communities and potential users.
- VeejayRampay 14y ago
  I am a Ruby programmer and let it be clear, the holier-than-thou attitude can indeed be pervasive in the Ruby community. Yet, most of the proselytism int the Ruby community are different shades of "Programming with this language makes me very happy, I'd like everyone to be happy as well". Of course it's not always as clear cut and there is sometimes much to be desired in terms of behavior. But that's where the Haskell in MY PERSONAL OPINION (so to take with a pinch of salt) is slightly different in how it seems to be variations of "Haskell is a superior language, everyone that doesn't use it has not reached enlightenment" TL;DR: Ruby people can be annoying like hippies can be annoying, Haskell enthusiasts I've found to be more akin to the Jehovah's witnesses of programming. And just so we're clear, I am going on a slightly provocative/trollish bender here, one that I hope will not offend too much, it's all in good fun.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrockway 14y ago
    I think you're imagining the holier-than-thou attitude. While people are certainly excited to have figured it out, nobody is asking them to be excited about it. If you disagree, how about citing some sources? You're good at coming up with analogies, but coming up with analogies is like being Hitler. What?
chongli 14y ago
>I still wonder to this day why Haskell programmers want their language to be loved so much. Libraries. It's the reason why anyone would want their chosen platform loved.
- riffraff 14y ago
  I'd say a healthy job market is also something anyone would want for their platform, and the more teams pick it up the more likely it would be for you to find a good job working with some stack you love.
flyinRyan 14y ago
I get exactly this vibe from a certain other language, but never Haskell.
papsosouid 14y ago
>I still wonder to this day why Haskell programmers want their language to be loved so much. I don't. I just talk about it so that some of the brighter people out there will try it out. This increases the pool of people for me to hire as haskell programmers that can get started right away instead of having to learn first.
- tome 14y ago
  Where do you work and what are you hiring for?
teamonkey 14y ago
"You want to play? Great! The rules? Perhaps it's easiest if you understand category theory first..."
- Peaker 14y ago
  I still didn't take the time to learn CT (after 4-5 years of Haskell). It might be time to do so, though, because I keep seeing the awesome things people with a CT background apply it to. However, you can get very very far in Haskell without ever doing or touching any CT.
  - teamonkey 14y ago
    Yep, but mentioning it is extremely offputting to new users. And like you say it's simply not true.
fusiongyro 14y ago
Many programmers find it easier to understand something by trying to explain it. Haskell has a lot of foreign concepts, so you see a lot more articles from people trying to convey their "aha!" moment. Many of these are erroneous or overly exuberant but it's just because people get excited when they first understand something new. It probably does come across as proselytization--that may even be the intent--but if it helps you cope with it, know that the majority of these articles are first impressions from beginners getting their minds blown, and most of them don't stick it out.
tikhonj 14y ago
I've seen far more people advocate Python than Haskell, and look at it now! Of course, since Python is already popular and widely used, this has died down a bit since. That said, even on HN, where it seems almost everybody is using Python anyhow, I still see at least as many comments promoting Python as Haskell.

friendly_chap 14y ago

> wondering why no one will play with him That's kind of a strong statement about a language which has approx. 1000 users in it's IRC chatroom.

VeejayRampay 14y ago
The number of people present in the IRC channel is more of a sign that they have a very engaged and active community, which is a good sign for the language itself, for sure, but doesn't necessarily correlate to the general adoption of Haskell as a whole. A measure like http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... (by no means a perfect one, quite like speed benchmarks ironically) seems to indicate that Haskell still has a long way to go before reaching "mainstream adoption". But you're right about that statement, it was intended more as a humorous jab than a statement of absolute truth :)
- sixbrx 14y ago
  I don't think Haskellers particularly want mainstream adoption. Adoption among library writers would suffice... :)

Swizec 14y ago

Two things I love about Haskell. 1. It is very terse/expressive. I can look at code I haven't touched in 6 months and still understand what it's doing. Perhaps because my code is newbie code and thus somewhat simple. 2. It is the only language that brings me back to the days of Turbo Pascal when the joy of coding came from coding itself, not from building cool things. A small but vital distinction. That said, I rarely get to use Haskell. For most of my tasks javascript is better suited, but haskell has affected how I write javascript to a great extent.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
You have expressed something I have been worrying about with all these new APIs and frameworks - there is a joy to coding not necessarily connected to delivering business value.
- throwa 14y ago
  Joy is relative. What gives one person Joy might not give another joy. There just might be people who derive joy using frameworks to deliver business value who might not find joy in coding just for coding sake. For some programming is there hobby and doubles as work, so they derive joy in coding for coding sake. For other's coding is just a means to an end in their work and they have other hobbies. So every man to what gives him joy and no need to worry about those using Api's and framework to deliver value and pay bills.
chii 14y ago
have you tried http://roy.brianmckenna.org/ http://roy.brianmckenna.org/ ? its sort of haskell like, but compiles down to javascript, so you could use it in the browser.
abraxasz 14y ago
Maybe it is because I'm not a Haskell Guru, but although I love Haskell's terseness, it tends to make it very hard for me to read code I've written a while ago. I tend to get excited about cool Haskell features like Arrows, using them whenever I can, then I forget about them, and when I read my code 6 months later, it's like gibberish..

Peaker 14y ago

When you find a tool that in many ways is far better than every other tool used by the mainstream (and of course in some ways worse) you might get excited about it so you want to share the knowledge you found. Or maybe you prefer the tool you like to get more adoption so you could use it in more situations. I advocate Haskell because of those two reasons. I think that like me, many others can get enormous educational and practical benefits from learning Haskell and I'd really rather be using Haskell than e.g Python.

VeejayRampay 14y ago
Tons of other languages and programming styles can provide the same benefits. It doesn't have to be Haskell against Python or C++ against Erlang. We can pick, mix and match and let the best of the bunch naturally emerge.
- Peaker 14y ago
  I don't think other languages have the same benefits of Haskell. They have other benefits but not Haskell's. Python/Ruby: very easy to learn and be productive quickly. C: high level of control over resources and easy to get good performance. Haskell: very good static guarantees about correctness. Relatively easy to get decent and good performance. Extremely educational and mind expanding, far more than say Lisp. Allows very high levels of abstraction. Great concurrency and parallelism support. Lisp: easy to extend syntax with macros and manipulate programs programmatically. All these languages have benefits, but not quite the same ones.
  - VeejayRampay 14y ago
    What about Objective Caml? Seems to fit the bill for all those metrics as well, yet for a reason that eludes me to this day, it never quite reached the kind of "street rep" that Haskell now enjoys.
    - bgilroy26 14y ago
      A lot of the OCaml community is French-speaking.

sold 14y ago

It's different. It's like you were listening to one music genre all your life and there's suddenly something new. If, say, Python was the only language with "for(each)" loops, you'd see many blog posts about that too. After I saw this, the old style of iterating by index feels so antiquated. Haskell gives the same feeling many times. It has unique features when it comes to abstraction and I feel they are the right way to program.

rtpg 14y ago
strangely enough, I think one of the interesting features (type classes) only ended up reappearing in Go with its interfaces (granted, only in a very limited fashion).
- DanWaterworth 14y ago
  Go's interfaces are not like Haskell's typeclasses. Just try and write a Go interface that allows you to add two of the same things together.
  - codygman 14y ago
    What do you mean add two of the same things together exactly? If I'm not mistaken, what you are talking about is possible but I don't totally understand what you are saying. Could you provide an example?
    - btilly 14y ago
      He's talking about the inability to specify an interface that specifies functions that take two arguments of the same type. Go can't do that. You can sometimes work around it. For instance consider sorting. The natural approach is to specify a type that allows comparisons. Go can't do that. But in go you can have a collection which has a function Less(i, j int) bool that takes in two integers and compares the objects at those positions (which in turn just happen to be of the same type). But this is a limited work around, and there are plenty of cases where you can want something more flexible.

jrockway 14y ago

I'd say Haskell does one percent of the proselytising that Ruby does. You hear about it a lot on HN because people write interesting articles about it. Remember, most articles that are submitted aren't being upvoted. There's probably someone writing about how their ImmutableSet implementation for Java is the best thing ever, but it's not being upvoted because the community doesn't consider it interesting.

jacquesm 14y ago
What prompted this is not that I'm not fine with proselytizing, I just think that you should be even handed when you do so. False claims serve neither language or their communities and potential users.
VeejayRampay 14y ago
I am a Ruby programmer and let it be clear, the holier-than-thou attitude can indeed be pervasive in the Ruby community. Yet, most of the proselytism int the Ruby community are different shades of "Programming with this language makes me very happy, I'd like everyone to be happy as well". Of course it's not always as clear cut and there is sometimes much to be desired in terms of behavior. But that's where the Haskell in MY PERSONAL OPINION (so to take with a pinch of salt) is slightly different in how it seems to be variations of "Haskell is a superior language, everyone that doesn't use it has not reached enlightenment" TL;DR: Ruby people can be annoying like hippies can be annoying, Haskell enthusiasts I've found to be more akin to the Jehovah's witnesses of programming. And just so we're clear, I am going on a slightly provocative/trollish bender here, one that I hope will not offend too much, it's all in good fun.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- jrockway 14y ago
  I think you're imagining the holier-than-thou attitude. While people are certainly excited to have figured it out, nobody is asking them to be excited about it. If you disagree, how about citing some sources? You're good at coming up with analogies, but coming up with analogies is like being Hitler. What?

chongli 14y ago

>I still wonder to this day why Haskell programmers want their language to be loved so much. Libraries. It's the reason why anyone would want their chosen platform loved.

riffraff 14y ago
I'd say a healthy job market is also something anyone would want for their platform, and the more teams pick it up the more likely it would be for you to find a good job working with some stack you love.

flyinRyan 14y ago

I get exactly this vibe from a certain other language, but never Haskell.

papsosouid 14y ago

>I still wonder to this day why Haskell programmers want their language to be loved so much. I don't. I just talk about it so that some of the brighter people out there will try it out. This increases the pool of people for me to hire as haskell programmers that can get started right away instead of having to learn first.

tome 14y ago
Where do you work and what are you hiring for?

teamonkey 14y ago

"You want to play? Great! The rules? Perhaps it's easiest if you understand category theory first..."

Peaker 14y ago
I still didn't take the time to learn CT (after 4-5 years of Haskell). It might be time to do so, though, because I keep seeing the awesome things people with a CT background apply it to. However, you can get very very far in Haskell without ever doing or touching any CT.
- teamonkey 14y ago
  Yep, but mentioning it is extremely offputting to new users. And like you say it's simply not true.

fusiongyro 14y ago

Many programmers find it easier to understand something by trying to explain it. Haskell has a lot of foreign concepts, so you see a lot more articles from people trying to convey their "aha!" moment. Many of these are erroneous or overly exuberant but it's just because people get excited when they first understand something new. It probably does come across as proselytization--that may even be the intent--but if it helps you cope with it, know that the majority of these articles are first impressions from beginners getting their minds blown, and most of them don't stick it out.

tikhonj 14y ago

I've seen far more people advocate Python than Haskell, and look at it now! Of course, since Python is already popular and widely used, this has died down a bit since. That said, even on HN, where it seems almost everybody is using Python anyhow, I still see at least as many comments promoting Python as Haskell.