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Ask HN: Is Haskell Worth Learning?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Haskell Worth Learning?

#11
post #8

Absolutely yes, if you have only been working with langs such as C, Java, Javascript etc. Basically it will fundamentally shift your thinking. Honestly though, I prefer ocaml much more than haskell because it has a cleaner syntax.

> I prefer ocaml much more than haskell because it has a cleaner syntax.

That's interesting. One typically hears the other way round. Could you give some examples?

Re: Ask HN: Is Haskell Worth Learning?

#12
I'd say it depends on which languages you already know/have been exposed to.

After downloading some software written in Haskell this week, I installed GHC and got some books on Haskell. Got sick of constantly hearing about how cool it is! After reading a few dozen pages, I thought it looked a lot like (Standard) ML, which I got into a couple of years ago. So I googled differences between Haskell and ML, and they indeed sound not-so-very-different. So I gave up on that idea for now. I was after a language very different from any I knew before. Maybe next year. (In recent years have gotten into Lisp, Prolog, Forth, ML, Tcl etc - each totally different from each other and from languages I knew before.)

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. - Alan Perliss

Re: Ask HN: Is Haskell Worth Learning?

#13
If you were never exposed to functional programming before, learning Haskell will give you a whole new perspective on how you write code, and I bet it will make you a better programmer just because of that.

With that said, in Europe I ever came across exactly zero job ads that require Haskell, and exactly one in Singapore. In North America / Bay Area it might be more common though.

Re: Ask HN: Is Haskell Worth Learning?

#14

I'd say it depends on which languages you already know/have been exposed to. After downloading some software written in Haskell this week, I installed GHC and got some books on Haskell. Got sick of constantly hearing about how cool it is! After reading a few dozen pages, I thought it looked a lot like (Standard) ML, which I got into a couple of years ago. So I googled differences between Haskell and ML, and they inde…

I initially picked up Haskell because I hadn't done anything that was lazy by default, which - when you focus on pulling at that thread - can be a pretty big difference from any of the ones you've mentioned.

The syntax is pretty close to ML, for sure.

Ultimately, it's the type system and the pervasive immutability that I miss most when I'm working in other languages. The ML type system is related, but the differences (in both directions!) are interesting.

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