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I have to agree with the GP here. Haskell is actually an exceptionally simple, easy language to work with, once you get the basic concepts down. I have occasion

by swift 14y ago

I have to agree with the GP here. Haskell is actually an exceptionally simple, easy language to work with, once you get the basic concepts down. I have occasionally suffered some confusion in Haskell because of poorly documented third-party libraries, but the language itself is a joy.

viraptor 14y ago
I'd add a qualifier that if you know what you're writing and you're writing from scratch, it's relatively easy. Modifying existing programs can present an interesting challenge. For example once you have a working program and decide that actually some value could be read/written using a file instead of computed at runtime and the place you use it is 10 levels deep after calling a non-IO function, you've got two choices. Unsafe IO (then why not use it everywhere) or a minor program redesign. Haskell is the only language where I run into this kind of situation. (it's still quite simple despite this)
- tome 14y ago
  If your program is well factored then it probably won't be hard to switch to IO ten levels deep. Bonus: Haskell makes refactoring easy!
  - viraptor 14y ago
    Yes, but what happens to apps which depend on this piece of code? Suddenly the signatures change and you affect everyone with a change which should be completely transparent for them.
    - tome 14y ago
      It's hard to discuss without an example.
- mightybyte 14y ago
  I'd actually argue that modifying existing programs is where Haskell really shines. Strong static types and purity allow you to know a LOT more about arbitrary bits of code than any other language in mainstream use today.