For me:
I can hack something together quickly cutting corners if needed, then refactoring is easy and almost always works on compile when you get around to fixing things up.
Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
#32Here is a tangible benefit of learning Haskell which people agree on almost universally: learning Haskell will make you a better programmer even in other programming languages.
You will want to code using more elegant, more composeable and succinct, methods. You will want to break things down into small, provably correct units, and then combine them into larger solutions which take advantage of the proven correctness at the lower levels.
You will want to lean heavily on the type system and encode as many of your program constraints in there as possible, leaving your unit tests free to only deal with the logic of your code.
Even if you never write a piece of Haskell code again, you will find over time that more and more ideas from Haskell and similar languages are bleeding through into the languages you use. C++? Closures, optionals. C#? LINQ (monads). Obj-C? On the path to retirement, replaced with Swift. Java? Lambdas, optionals. Clojure? Typed Clojure. Scala? Scalaz. In fact, Swift? Swiftz. JavaScript? People are building entire functional languages (and reactive frameworks) on top of JS.
These things aren't happening by accident. Haskell is a fertile proving ground for the future of programming.
Re: Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
#33Funny, I once asked the same question about pure mathematics, and got similar answers. In the end I decided pure math wasn't the best bang for buck in terms of benefit to humanity, and decided to work on other things. When it comes to Haskell, there is a big problem that the people best qualified to speak on the matter have invested a lot of time in Haskell, and therefore are subject to biases associated with their i…
I am confused. If you feel there are much better languages than Haskell, how would Haskell be the "theoretically most advanced language"? As far as what I have learned and how I have been studying, I did try "Learn You a Haskell" but found its explanations inadequate and sometimes confusing. Searching the web, I find a number of people feeling the same. Meanwhile, I find a large number of people agreeing with your ex…
>I am confused. If you feel there are much better languages than Haskell, how would Haskell be the "theoretically most advanced language"?
Let me rephrase: I think that there are much better languages out there, that haven't been invented yet. The most theoretically advanced languages right now are dependently typed languages. Haskell isn't a dependently typed language, but learning Haskell is a necessary stepping stone to learning dependently typed languages.
Regarding LYAH, it's not really possible for me to comment given how little data I have. I know some CS courses for undergrads teach Haskell, I wonder what textbooks (if any) they use?
Re: Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
#34Spoiler: there aren't any. It's something hipsters, wannabe be mathematicians and idiots that haven't done any real programming like to circle jerk over. If you thought well designed classes were hard to understand and bloated than just wait until it's condensed into an ugly, undocumented, confusing set of alien hieroglyphics that denote instructions for a theoretical machine that doesn't resemble how modern computers actually work.
Re: Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
#35I recently spent a year and a half writing C. There were a couple points where, subjectively, it seemed that my Haskell experience suggested solutions that I would not have found otherwise. One in particular seemed to do quite a bit of heavy lifting over the course of the project. I've been meaning to put together a blog post but have several things above it in both my general "things to do" queue and my "blog posts to write" one.
I apologize on behalf of the Haskell community for any harsh treatment that wasn't deserved, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some - the tone does seem to have shifted unfortunately.
What were the questions you had, and where did you ask them?
Re: Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
#36http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html Learning Haskell adds to the mass of things you know, and the volume of that mass determines the level of your general expertise. You asked for tangible things, but it's harder to see what those may be. Perhaps your perception will be enhanced: perhaps you will better see and care about side-effects, opportunities for pure functions, etc. I don't think any learning effort that lead…
In absolute terms, no, learning is never a waste of time. In a world with limited time, though, everything has its opportunity cost. The time spent learning A could have been spent learning any of B through Z. So: "Is Haskell worth learning?" Yes, certainly. "Is learning Haskell the best use of my limited time for such activities?" That's a much harder question. (And it doesn't have to be the best use of your time. I…
I think the opportunity cost is meant to be weighed in any question of "is X worth it?"
That said, I appreciate your calling it out specifically (even if I'd have used other words), as that is absolutely the real question.
My answer, I'm sure you'd guess, is "yes" - but certainly I agree that it's harder than the same question but ignoring the costs :-P
Re: Ask HN: What are specific tangible benefits of learning Haskell?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where would you suggest I ask?
I think somewhere where more people interested in teaching Haskell hang out. The haskell-beginners mailing list and the #haskell-beginners channel on Freenode spring to mind, but I am not a member of either so if you take that option please pay attention to whatever the particular ettiquette is there! I'm not personally sure what it is for either of those places.
I lurk on #haskell-beginners, and things seem friendly there.