What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#2The first example of parametric polymorphism, as introduced by a good teacher.
I wasn't even attending the class proper, but taking notes for a deaf student as a paid job.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#3My "ah ha" moment with Haskell was after a few years of using it quite regularly, I realized that it wasn't actually making me more productive in the kind of code I actually write from day-to-day.
It's a lovely language and I wouldn't discourage anyone from using it, but for my purposes I realized it was more exciting than useful at some point, and after that I haven't been back to it as much.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#4My "ah ha" moment with Haskell was when I ragequit for the 23rd time and decided that Haskell is probably not for me.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#5My "ah ha" moment with Haskell was after a few years of using it quite regularly, I realized that it wasn't actually making me more productive in the kind of code I actually write from day-to-day. It's a lovely language and I wouldn't discourage anyone from using it, but for my purposes I realized it was more exciting than useful at some point, and after that I haven't been back to it as much.
What's your go to language now?
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#6I studied haskell at university, but there was very little explanation of why it would be useful or the fundamental difference between it and a standard iterative language (or maybe there was and I skipped that day).
At that point I assumed it was simply a language invented by academics in order to torture undergrads.
It wasn't until a bit later and playing around with things like python and Javascript and using closures/lambdas that I realized I could use some of the functional ideas I had drilled when doing haskell to write simpler code.
Now when I go back to Java I often get frustrated and the amount of code I have to write simply to work around the fact that functions are not first class objects.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#7My "ah ha" moment with Haskell was after a few years of using it quite regularly, I realized that it wasn't actually making me more productive in the kind of code I actually write from day-to-day. It's a lovely language and I wouldn't discourage anyone from using it, but for my purposes I realized it was more exciting than useful at some point, and after that I haven't been back to it as much.
Agreed. It's so beautiful, but so constraining. I'm a much better developer for having used it, but returned to Python/Ruby/Java[for-speed] after spending lots of time with Haskell.
That said, I desperately miss static-typing and Hindley-Milner type inference... I keep searching for the perfect language.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#8My "ah ha" moment with Haskell was after a few years of using it quite regularly, I realized that it wasn't actually making me more productive in the kind of code I actually write from day-to-day. It's a lovely language and I wouldn't discourage anyone from using it, but for my purposes I realized it was more exciting than useful at some point, and after that I haven't been back to it as much.
Agreed. It's so beautiful, but so constraining. I'm a much better developer for having used it, but returned to Python/Ruby/Java[for-speed] after spending lots of time with Haskell. That said, I desperately miss static-typing and Hindley-Milner type inference... I keep searching for the perfect language.
Then I would be interested about your opinion on OcaML/MLTon, F# and Scala. To me they seem like a good balance. If you are more adventurous then try Felix.
EDIT: apparently someone did not like your comment. Some downvotes confound me.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#9I studied haskell at university, but there was very little explanation of why it would be useful or the fundamental difference between it and a standard iterative language (or maybe there was and I skipped that day). At that point I assumed it was simply a language invented by academics in order to torture undergrads. It wasn't until a bit later and playing around with things like python and Javascript and using clos…
> Now when I go back to Java I often get frustrated and the amount of code I have to write simply to work around the fact that functions are not first class objects.
Frankly, I've mostly gotten over Java's lack of first-class functions and just make do with the boilerplate involved with regular for-loops or with anonymous implementations of interfaces that are just stand-ins for functions, etc. What I really struggle with nowadays is Java's (relative to Haskell's) weak type system. I'm only a novice Haskell programmer, but even so I miss things like Maybe, Either, tuples, etc, which can be really painful to work around the lack of in Java. I've realized I would rather work in a dynamically typed language or a strong statically typed language than the wretched mess that is Java.
Re: What was your "ah ha" moment with Haskell?
#10I really like this:
twoK=1:(map (2*) twoK)
I still have a long way to go though - I can't write a lot of it without getting stuck and giving up. It would be really nice if I was comfortable with haskell.