What about javascript? Could that be a decent language to get into functional programming? It's definitely mainstream enough.
Advanced programming languages (2009)
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Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#32What about javascript? Could that be a decent language to get into functional programming? It's definitely mainstream enough.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#33This post is very fortuitous for me. I've been looking to learn a functional language and I had more or less narrowed my options to Haskell, OCaml and Scala. I liked the breakdown between these languages and the resources. Can anyone who programs in Haskell or OCaml regularly tell me the current state of standard and third party library support? I'm very attracted to Scala because it has JVM support, which sounds fan…
I didn't have large problems with Haskell library availability until lately. I was attempting to see what some code from work would look like from work. It used:
Mssql, Cassandra, CSV, and MySQL
MySQL and CSV were no problem. The Cassandra bindings were bitrotted and I had to do a good amount of work fixing the Cassandra dependency and the thrift dependency it has. Mssql bindings through hs-odbc have an allocation error I haven't had the time or energy to figure out.
If I were using Haskell in production and not having mssql was a showstopper, I'd need to take the time to fix this library to with fix my immediate case and then continue maintaining it.
I found that Haskell Library support seems to be stronger in the technically Superior Technologies Department. For instance postgres support is quite a bit better than MySQL support.
It makes total sense that the Haskell Community would put more work into supporting technically Superior Solutions using their technically Superior language, but I fear that's biting off more than you can chew.
At home for instance I've been struggling with Linux issues rather than putting time into my side project. It would probably be a better economic choice to buy something with more seamless Hardware support like a Mac, and then be bleeding edge with my side project using Haskell.
Point being, if every part of your life is bleeding edge you'll just end up bloody and never going anywhere.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#34what "advanced" even mean? All those languages, they don't do something that others are not capable of(not mention that all the jvm ones just produce bytecode over the same vm)...different development principles is not a reason to call a language advanced.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jane Street Capital's Yaron Minsky once said that contrary to popular belief hiring for OCaml developers was easier because the signal to noise ratio in the OCaml community is so much better than other, more approachable languages. He would send a job post to the OCaml mailing list, get 15 responses, interview 10 people, bring five onsite and ultimately hire three new people. I don't have direct experience with this,…
I've got managerial experience hiring (on both ends of the spectrum of talent) and engineering experience in computational finance at a prop firm similar to Jane Street. He has a fast-hire ability and high-signal to noise for sure but he works at a prop firm . His hiring practices are a market anomaly simply because he can pay effectively whatever a competent developer wants. Jane Street can basically throw money at…
Thanks for adding more color to this!
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#36After walking in the land of functions for a long time I wonder if there are advanced advanced languages.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#37what "advanced" even mean? All those languages, they don't do something that others are not capable of(not mention that all the jvm ones just produce bytecode over the same vm)...different development principles is not a reason to call a language advanced.
Haskell and ML at least have advanced type systems. Since types are erased during compilation, you can't reason about type systems in terms of their impact on the generated code. An example of a simple type system is C with its structs.
Haskell also has lazy evaluation, which is very difficult to do in C. Obviously you could encode your own trampolines, but at that point you might as well be coding in a Turing tar pit language "where anything is possible but nothing of interest is practical".
Pattern-matching and ADTs are also usually difficult to do in other languages.
Most of the benefits of something like Haskell only show up on larger projects, so it's not meaningful to point to specific language features as a point against it. I can do just about anything in C. The type systems you probably can't do; you'd have to embed a language and that doesn't count.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#38This post is very fortuitous for me. I've been looking to learn a functional language and I had more or less narrowed my options to Haskell, OCaml and Scala. I liked the breakdown between these languages and the resources. Can anyone who programs in Haskell or OCaml regularly tell me the current state of standard and third party library support? I'm very attracted to Scala because it has JVM support, which sounds fan…
The huge difference between Haskell and the other two (that isn't in libraries) is that Haskell has controlled side effects, whereas side effects are uncontrolled in the other two (and virtually all other languages...)
That, at least to me, is way more interesting/important than libraries, which can always be ported or otherwise interfaced with.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jane Street Capital's Yaron Minsky once said that contrary to popular belief hiring for OCaml developers was easier because the signal to noise ratio in the OCaml community is so much better than other, more approachable languages. He would send a job post to the OCaml mailing list, get 15 responses, interview 10 people, bring five onsite and ultimately hire three new people. I don't have direct experience with this,…
I've got managerial experience hiring (on both ends of the spectrum of talent) and engineering experience in computational finance at a prop firm similar to Jane Street. He has a fast-hire ability and high-signal to noise for sure but he works at a prop firm . His hiring practices are a market anomaly simply because he can pay effectively whatever a competent developer wants. Jane Street can basically throw money at…
The benefit there doesn't seem to be intrinsic qualities of your language, but the benefits of a small community of like-minded individuals.
Re: Advanced programming languages (2009)
#40Datalog for constraint programming, but not Prolog? Oh come on. If you're going to recommend languages, look some up, already.