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>I know a lot of people encharmed by it, but no-one productive (i.e. delivering products quickly; it's not the same as solving pure, mathematical problems). Is

>I know a lot of people encharmed by it, but no-one productive (i.e. delivering products quickly; it's not the same as solving pure, mathematical problems). Is this actually true, or is it "true in your heart"? Very few people use haskell for solving "pure mathematical problems". People use it for things like developing the fastest microkernel in existence, doing high volume trading, making games, and writing boring old web apps. References to "pure mathematical problems" and implying nobody is actually doing anything with haskell come off as sounding like second (or third, or fourth) hand FUD. We taught our PHP team haskell. They had their first project in production in three months. There's nothing special about math and haskell.

stared 12y ago
Links or it didn't happen. I don't imply that nobody uses it for solving practical problems. Just, I made my judgement based on: - friends (I know, it may be biased), - GitHub codes I use (and in general, popularity), - blog posts on Haskell (I encounter mostly language-oriented; less problem-oriented like "let's make a 3d game", "web scraping", "machine learning", "web dev" etc).
- chas 12y ago
  It sounds like imanaccount247 is from IMVU, they wrote up their experience with Haskell here: http://engineering.imvu.com/2014/03/24/what-its-like-to-use-haskell/ http://engineering.imvu.com/2014/03/24/what-its-like-to-use-... It was previously discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7472452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7472452
- codygman 12y ago
  If I took time to link to each one of those would it change your opinion any?
  - saosebastiao 12y ago
    I'm interested. I probably wont ever use Haskell again, but it would be nice to see that there is more to the community than the self-congratulatory cleverness competition that I experienced.
  - stared 12y ago
    Likely. Ideally with code tutorials/examples rather than "me and my friends changed X to Haskell and we liked it". I mean, it's not I am anti-Haskell or something (it is clearly on my list things to learn), and I am theoretically-inclined (I did quantum physics and pure mathematics). Moreover, I am biased towards clever, succinct solutions rather that horrible code that "just works, somehow". Yet, for practical problems I do things that work, even if it is JavaScript code, which is not even close to "pure" or "nice".
    - imanaccount247 12y ago
      "I'm not anti-Haskell, I just lie about it on the internet repeating tired old FUD that anyone who has ever tried it would instantly recognize is BS". Haskell is a general purpose language. It is used for practical problems. I don't know of a problem that is "pure" or "nice". The reason I am so harsh in response to this nonsense is because it fucked me over already. People have been repeating this crap for years, and I was one of the unfortunate people who fell for it. And then after a couple years of using scala instead because it is "practical" I realized that the "practical" stuff is impractical and the source of most of my errors and problems. So I actually tried haskell, and realized all the FUD was total nonsense and that there's nothing impractical about haskell at all. I did not like that I had wasted 2-3 years because of liars, and people who blindly repeat those lies because they like the sound of them.
    - stared 12y ago
      OK, I see things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813313 or http://kukuruku.co/hub/haskell/how-to-implement-deutschs-algorithm-in-haskell http://kukuruku.co/hub/haskell/how-to-implement-deutschs-alg... or http://haskelldata.com/ http://haskelldata.com/
- Ixiaus 12y ago
  FYI ekmett has often been ranked as the #1 open source contributor on Github and most if not all of his are Haskell. Blog posts are heavily skewed towards how to write elegant code or how to use a difficult to understand feature and less toward "build a todo list app" or "build hangman in five hours". Not that there shouldn't be material like that but it's usually non-existent because the programmers coming to Haskell don't need it but need help using lens, or pipes, or attoparsec at the implementation level. Haskell is most definitely used for pragmatic industrial applications. You'll see a lot of the ivory tower research being done in Agda or other dependently typed theorem provers. Research is still done with Haskell but it's definitely geared towards how to improve the language not just for the sake of intellectual masturbation but also for programmers like me that are building valuable companies in tight markets with a lot of resource constraints.
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  >Links or it didn't happen. To what? I'm supposed to link you to reality? How about since haskell is a general purpose, turing complete language, you demonstrate that there's some magical reason that it can only be used for "pure math problems" and nobody can be productive in it doing "real work". Why should a random nonsense claim be given the standing of fact and need to be disproved? >friends (I know, it may be biased) That's why I asked if it was true in your heart. Lots of people say things they think sound reasonable and believable based on other third hand information, but which are in fact made up. I have a very hard time believing you have so many friends into haskell and unable to write programs in it. Especially after teaching a bunch of PHP people who had never heard of functional programming (and half had never heard of types!) haskell in a few short lessons. Either your friends are some crazy statistical anomaly, or my developers are. Or perhaps your friends are apocryphal. >GitHub codes I use "I don't use anything written in haskell so you can't write anything practical in it" is a pretty poor argument. >I encounter mostly language-oriented Where are you encountering them? And are you sure you aren't just misinterpreting "practical" blog posts as "academic" because they mention something you don't want to hear like monads? Even most things I would assume you classify as "language-oriented" are still about solving practical problems. http://ro-che.info/articles/2014-12-26-monad-control-type-synonyms http://ro-che.info/articles/2014-12-26-monad-control-type-sy... That might sound scary to people who don't know haskell, but it is about solving a common issue with web development (and other server type programming) in a nice reusable library. Do you really think there's tens of thousands of people just sitting around writing haskell code that does nothing for no reason?
phamilton 12y ago
It would be interesting to define product as "dollars produced" or something of that sort. Then rank languages by net product and then by net productivity (net product over time). I would expect it all to be heavily skewed towards high volume trading.

stared 12y ago

Links or it didn't happen. I don't imply that nobody uses it for solving practical problems. Just, I made my judgement based on: - friends (I know, it may be biased), - GitHub codes I use (and in general, popularity), - blog posts on Haskell (I encounter mostly language-oriented; less problem-oriented like "let's make a 3d game", "web scraping", "machine learning", "web dev" etc).

chas 12y ago
It sounds like imanaccount247 is from IMVU, they wrote up their experience with Haskell here: http://engineering.imvu.com/2014/03/24/what-its-like-to-use-haskell/ http://engineering.imvu.com/2014/03/24/what-its-like-to-use-... It was previously discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7472452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7472452
codygman 12y ago
If I took time to link to each one of those would it change your opinion any?
- saosebastiao 12y ago
  I'm interested. I probably wont ever use Haskell again, but it would be nice to see that there is more to the community than the self-congratulatory cleverness competition that I experienced.
- stared 12y ago
  Likely. Ideally with code tutorials/examples rather than "me and my friends changed X to Haskell and we liked it". I mean, it's not I am anti-Haskell or something (it is clearly on my list things to learn), and I am theoretically-inclined (I did quantum physics and pure mathematics). Moreover, I am biased towards clever, succinct solutions rather that horrible code that "just works, somehow". Yet, for practical problems I do things that work, even if it is JavaScript code, which is not even close to "pure" or "nice".
  - imanaccount247 12y ago
    "I'm not anti-Haskell, I just lie about it on the internet repeating tired old FUD that anyone who has ever tried it would instantly recognize is BS". Haskell is a general purpose language. It is used for practical problems. I don't know of a problem that is "pure" or "nice". The reason I am so harsh in response to this nonsense is because it fucked me over already. People have been repeating this crap for years, and I was one of the unfortunate people who fell for it. And then after a couple years of using scala instead because it is "practical" I realized that the "practical" stuff is impractical and the source of most of my errors and problems. So I actually tried haskell, and realized all the FUD was total nonsense and that there's nothing impractical about haskell at all. I did not like that I had wasted 2-3 years because of liars, and people who blindly repeat those lies because they like the sound of them.
  - stared 12y ago
    OK, I see things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813313 or http://kukuruku.co/hub/haskell/how-to-implement-deutschs-algorithm-in-haskell http://kukuruku.co/hub/haskell/how-to-implement-deutschs-alg... or http://haskelldata.com/ http://haskelldata.com/
Ixiaus 12y ago
FYI ekmett has often been ranked as the #1 open source contributor on Github and most if not all of his are Haskell. Blog posts are heavily skewed towards how to write elegant code or how to use a difficult to understand feature and less toward "build a todo list app" or "build hangman in five hours". Not that there shouldn't be material like that but it's usually non-existent because the programmers coming to Haskell don't need it but need help using lens, or pipes, or attoparsec at the implementation level. Haskell is most definitely used for pragmatic industrial applications. You'll see a lot of the ivory tower research being done in Agda or other dependently typed theorem provers. Research is still done with Haskell but it's definitely geared towards how to improve the language not just for the sake of intellectual masturbation but also for programmers like me that are building valuable companies in tight markets with a lot of resource constraints.
imanaccount247 12y ago
>Links or it didn't happen. To what? I'm supposed to link you to reality? How about since haskell is a general purpose, turing complete language, you demonstrate that there's some magical reason that it can only be used for "pure math problems" and nobody can be productive in it doing "real work". Why should a random nonsense claim be given the standing of fact and need to be disproved? >friends (I know, it may be biased) That's why I asked if it was true in your heart. Lots of people say things they think sound reasonable and believable based on other third hand information, but which are in fact made up. I have a very hard time believing you have so many friends into haskell and unable to write programs in it. Especially after teaching a bunch of PHP people who had never heard of functional programming (and half had never heard of types!) haskell in a few short lessons. Either your friends are some crazy statistical anomaly, or my developers are. Or perhaps your friends are apocryphal. >GitHub codes I use "I don't use anything written in haskell so you can't write anything practical in it" is a pretty poor argument. >I encounter mostly language-oriented Where are you encountering them? And are you sure you aren't just misinterpreting "practical" blog posts as "academic" because they mention something you don't want to hear like monads? Even most things I would assume you classify as "language-oriented" are still about solving practical problems. http://ro-che.info/articles/2014-12-26-monad-control-type-synonyms http://ro-che.info/articles/2014-12-26-monad-control-type-sy... That might sound scary to people who don't know haskell, but it is about solving a common issue with web development (and other server type programming) in a nice reusable library. Do you really think there's tens of thousands of people just sitting around writing haskell code that does nothing for no reason?

phamilton 12y ago

It would be interesting to define product as "dollars produced" or something of that sort. Then rank languages by net product and then by net productivity (net product over time). I would expect it all to be heavily skewed towards high volume trading.