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Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

joshbassett.info

51–60 of 118 posts

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#51

If anyone wants an introduction to functional programming using Scala, I really recommend Martin Odersky's coursera course ( https://class.coursera.org/progfun-2012-001/class ). He restricts you to functional Scala; there isn't a mutated variable in the whole course. It isn't officially a course right now. You won't get a certificate for taking it, and I don't think the grader is turned on, but the other materials ar…

Does the course cover Functors, Applicatives, Monoids, and Monads? What about other higher-level functional constructs (Arrows, Zippers...)? From what I've seen, I think Scala is a nice language. One thing I don't like is particularly that it's a bit kitchen-sink-ish: there's a whole lot of syntax and semantics to learn, seemingly due to the OO side of the language. By comparison Haskell is quite simple. All the high…

>Does the course cover Functors, Applicatives, Monoids, and Monads? What about other higher-level functional constructs (Arrows, Zippers...)?

Nope. It's very intro level, though the students basically begged Odersky for a part II, and he seemed very open to it.

And I totally didn't mean to imply that I thought people should learn Scala instead of Haskell. I was just sharing a FP resource I found helpful.

Not actually having mastered the higher level functional constructs yet myself, I really don't have a firm opinion about which is the "better" approach. Personally, I've looked at both languages and I know that each helped me understand the other. So if I have any opinion, it's that if you get stuck, it's probably a good idea to approach it from another angle, like the author is doing.

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#52

Anybody here has developed and deployed a Scala-based or/and Haskell-based project for production? I mean systems for business purpose where rubber meets the road with timeline to hit and budget to meet. Far too often the stories are shared by people who learned a new language for 3 months and implemented a pet system where only a few real users. Definitely I respect their zeal and curiosity, but I am more interested…

I've recently finished an internal web app in Scala. It uses Play 2.x web framework, Squeryl for database access. The main pain point was that there was no way of reverse engineering an existing database schema into classes for use with Squeryl, but I was able to write my own. Overall I've been very happy with the combination, and I plan to use it on my next project.

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#53

If anyone wants an introduction to functional programming using Scala, I really recommend Martin Odersky's coursera course ( https://class.coursera.org/progfun-2012-001/class ). He restricts you to functional Scala; there isn't a mutated variable in the whole course. It isn't officially a course right now. You won't get a certificate for taking it, and I don't think the grader is turned on, but the other materials ar…

If anyone wants an introduction to functional programming using Scala, I really recommend Martin Odersky's coursera course ( https://class.coursera.org/progfun-2012-001/class ). He restricts you to functional Scala; there isn't a mutated variable in the whole course. It isn't officially a course right now. You won't get a certificate for taking it, and I don't think the grader is turned on, but the other materials ar…

Really? Normally you can enroll for old courses that have completed and view the old material. I've done it before, but you do need a coursera account. Is that not working in this case?

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#54
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years ago the situation was far worse, dependency-hell-wise. About hooking up the process for some profiling information, take a look at: http://ocharles.org.uk/blog/posts/2012-12-11-24-day-of-hacka...

It's still bad and cabal is still bad. I was in #haskell on IRC not too long ago and they couldn't even figure out why a haskell-platform install couldn't upgrade its own cabal with no other packages installed. Your propagandizing is either based on very insulated anecdote or you're being disingenuous for the sake of promoting your favorite language. The salesmanship does not help Haskell and sets expectations poorly…

I am not saying cabal is perfect, but the situation has dramatically improved since the prevention of spurious reinstalls. It also seems that hackage uploaders are playing nicer these days, and I just generally get far less breakage.

Lots of work is being done on Haskell's package system to make it better.

I've been using Haskell for 5 years. It used to be very painful. It is only rarely painful these days.

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#55
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a war file?

It's a zip file following Java convention that can be dropped in any Java web application server (like Apache Tomcat). Basically a lot of sites you go to have been deployed by dropping a .war file in a Java web application server. That technologically powers a gigantic part of the Internet (just look at SO or Quora or expert exchange or any TIOOBE index or any Java job offer: Java webapps are pretty much powering the…

Are you suggesting that SO - StackOverflow.com - runs on Java?

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone wants an introduction to functional programming using Scala, I really recommend Martin Odersky's coursera course ( https://class.coursera.org/progfun-2012-001/class ). He restricts you to functional Scala; there isn't a mutated variable in the whole course. It isn't officially a course right now. You won't get a certificate for taking it, and I don't think the grader is turned on, but the other materials ar…

Really? Normally you can enroll for old courses that have completed and view the old material. I've done it before, but you do need a coursera account. Is that not working in this case?

Exactly:

Enrollment is Closed

We are sorry, but the enrollment for Functional Programming Principles in Scala is currently closed. We will inform you via email when new Coursera classes are launched, so stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile, check out some of our other classes here!

The Coursera Team

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#57
Yeah I've tried learning Scala for a year.

It was painful, real painful and I felt like I didn't learn much from it.

Now I'm learning Erlang and I'm applying what I've learned from Scala to Erlang and wow. I'm glad I took at stab at Scala. Erlang is wonderful btw, it's so simple there are some minor drawback like no string primitive... I also love the fact that there is no loop, it forces me to think recursively. I guess because it's so simple I can just focus on learning the functional part instead of other stuff such as new objects paradigm (traits, etc..), design pattern ("pimp my whatever"), and type. I'm guess once I'm done with this I'll focus on type, thinking Haskell...

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#59
post #34

If anyone wants an introduction to functional programming using Scala, I really recommend Martin Odersky's coursera course ( https://class.coursera.org/progfun-2012-001/class ). He restricts you to functional Scala; there isn't a mutated variable in the whole course. It isn't officially a course right now. You won't get a certificate for taking it, and I don't think the grader is turned on, but the other materials ar…

Not to mention, functional programming forces you to grok recursion and higher-order functions. Huge side benefit of learning FP that you can also implement in your OOP to write more elegant methods. Never write "for int i..." again.

And hope that your imperative language supports tail call optimization? ;)

Re: Hello Haskell, Goodbye Scala

#60
post #11

For personal projects or for learning the principles of FP, there is nothing wrong with using Haskell. From personal experience however, I will not be using Haskell again for a larger professional project, because our team ran into too many time consuming issues and problems that have been solved successfully in other languages/environments (especially the JVM) like dependency management or reasoning over runtime cha…

Interestingly, despite their respective reputations Haskell is by far more popular than Scala: http://www.langpop.com/

There's lots of measures: Indeed job listings, google searches, mailing list volume; tiobe tries to incorporate a few.

http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=2892

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/berkeley-progra...

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