11–20 of 242 posts
I disagree. It's a beautiful language but it lacks a lot of features to make it useable at scale. And in my experience Haskell engineers are extremely smart but the environment/culture they create makes it difficult to foster team spirit.
I've been in 2 companies in the last 4 years who initially used Haskell in production. One has transitioned to Go and the other is rewriting the codebase in Rust.
> Haskell is great for business and great in production. Hot take: no it isn't. It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. I question the well-being of anybody who subjects themselves to the pain and torture that is Haskell. If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to…
I agree with your other points but what's wrong with the syntax? I actually really like the syntax for the most part
> Haskell is great for business and great in production I disagree. It's a beautiful language but it lacks a lot of features to make it useable at scale. And in my experience Haskell engineers are extremely smart but the environment/culture they create makes it difficult to foster team spirit. I've been in 2 companies in the last 4 years who initially used Haskell in production. One has transitioned to Go and the oth…
Can you elaborate on this?
> Haskell is great for business and great in production. Hot take: no it isn't. It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. I question the well-being of anybody who subjects themselves to the pain and torture that is Haskell. If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to…
I don’t think it’s fair or constructive to disagree with his findings unless you also have experience using the language, and it doesn’t sound like that is the case.
> Haskell is great for business and great in production. Hot take: no it isn't. It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. I question the well-being of anybody who subjects themselves to the pain and torture that is Haskell. If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to…
Odd. I did some Haskell in prodution (hardware control and Unix daemons) and it was delightful.
> It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely.
It is unfamiliar if you have only worked in the C family of languages. The syntax is quite similar to the rest of the ML family, which dates back to 1973. It's basically as old as C. I had the good fortunate of learning Standard ML around the same time as C, SQL, and Perl. Standard ML and SQL were by far the most straightforward to learn.
> If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to write it in Haskell", I'd get laughed + kicked out.
Yes, you would, because why are you talking about programming languages in a boardroom? If you mean a more technical review committee, I wouldn't be so sure of that.
> Haskell is great for business and great in production. Hot take: no it isn't. It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. I question the well-being of anybody who subjects themselves to the pain and torture that is Haskell. If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to…
> It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I agree with your other points but what's wrong with the syntax? I actually really like the syntax for the most part
> Haskell is great for business and great in production I disagree. It's a beautiful language but it lacks a lot of features to make it useable at scale. And in my experience Haskell engineers are extremely smart but the environment/culture they create makes it difficult to foster team spirit. I've been in 2 companies in the last 4 years who initially used Haskell in production. One has transitioned to Go and the oth…
I definitely agree that there are many examples of ineffective Haskell culture. As a Haskell contractor I get to see how a lot of different shops do things. One thing I can't really tease apart is that most startups have a lot of engineering culture problems, and picking Haskell doesn't inoculate you from that effect.
The main cultural issue I see specific to Haskell shops is that frequently rabbit holes aren't discouraged. By that, I mean there is too much of a tinkerer mentality where engineers are allowed to or even encouraged to experiment with untested ideas instead of known effective solutions. That is a habit I had to deprogram myself from too. It's very fun! In your spare time.
I hope we get to work together again! But I'm usually only called in if there's trouble, so maybe I shouldn't :^)
> Haskell is great for business and great in production. Hot take: no it isn't. It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. I question the well-being of anybody who subjects themselves to the pain and torture that is Haskell. If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to…
> It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I agree with your other points but what's wrong with the syntax? I actually really like the syntax for the most part
> Haskell is great for business and great in production. Hot take: no it isn't. It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. I question the well-being of anybody who subjects themselves to the pain and torture that is Haskell. If I stood up in a corporate business boardroom meeting for tech analysis on a new project and said "I want to…
> Hot take: no it isn't. Odd. I did some Haskell in prodution (hardware control and Unix daemons) and it was delightful. > It is extremely hard to learn, has an extremely confusing + needlessly complicated syntax and I question the payoff immensely. It is unfamiliar if you have only worked in the C family of languages. The syntax is quite similar to the rest of the ML family, which dates back to 1973. It's basically…
How close is it to say something Like F# then? I've toyed with F# a bit and was able to pick it up pretty decently, but a lot of Haskell still looks foreign to me