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Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

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Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#31

Post by zelphirkalt »

anthk wrote: post #18

I tried some ML language once, it's difficult even to write a basic factorial example, which in Scheme I could do it iteratively and recursively with ease. Either with S9 Scheme for quick fun (it has Unix sockets and ncurses :D ) or Chicken Scheme for completeneless (R5RS/R7RS-small + modules), I always have fun with both. Oh, and well, Forth, too, but more like a puzzle (altough it shines to teach you that you can d…

From my limited SMLNJ experience I think for something as simple as factorial, it is nearly the same. Both have TCO, recursion, inner functions, pattern matching and those good things. You can structure the code the same way.

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#33

Post by ngruhn »

coldtea wrote: post #29

Because they're elegant. Haskell is a conceptual and syntax mess.

Compared to lisp? Ok fine. Syntax doesn't get more simple than Lisp. But compared to JavaScript? C++? C#? Haskell is top tier when it comes to syntactic and conceptual elegance. The biggest problem is tooling, I would say.

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#34

Post by aidenn0 »

evdubs wrote: post #8

> Lisp hackers have been effortlessly reshaping the language for decades using the powerful macro system and extending and bending the language to their will. I've written a bit of Racket code ( https://github.com/evdubs?tab=repositories&q=&type=&language... ) and I still haven't written a macro. In only one case did I even think a macro would be useful: merging class member definitions to include both the type and t…

How do Lisp developers deal with XML and JSON? Convert it to s-expressions.

As a common lisp developer, that is only very vaguely true for me.

The mapping I prefer for jsonLisp is:

  true:  t
  false: nil
  null:  :null
  []     #()
  {}     (make-hash-table :test #'equal)
This falls out of my desire for the mapping to be bijective:

- The only built-in type that is unambiguously a mapping type is hash-tabe.

- nil is the only value that is falsy in CL

- () is the same as nil, so we can't use it as an empty list; vectors are the obvious alternative

- Not really any obvious values left to use for "null" so punt to a keyword.

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#35

Post by jonahx »

crabbone wrote: post #21

I don't believe monads are a "heavy handed abstraction" and that's what prevents people from prototyping in Haskell. What really prevents people from writing in Haskell at a reasonable speed is the poor language design. Programming languages are supposed to aid in reading by emphasizing structure. It's important to emphasize that a particular group of "words" constitutes a function call, or a variable definition, or…

From your last paragraph, I am curious which languages / paradigms you advocate for. Sorry it wasn't clear to me except that you like SWANK, which I'm not familiar with.

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#36

Post by openuntil3am »

crabbone wrote: post #21

I don't believe monads are a "heavy handed abstraction" and that's what prevents people from prototyping in Haskell. What really prevents people from writing in Haskell at a reasonable speed is the poor language design. Programming languages are supposed to aid in reading by emphasizing structure. It's important to emphasize that a particular group of "words" constitutes a function call, or a variable definition, or…

Your criticism of Haskell is entirely subjective. There are lots of people, myself included, that like and prefer Haskell's syntax.

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#37

Post by ngruhn »

crabbone wrote: post #21

I don't believe monads are a "heavy handed abstraction" and that's what prevents people from prototyping in Haskell. What really prevents people from writing in Haskell at a reasonable speed is the poor language design. Programming languages are supposed to aid in reading by emphasizing structure. It's important to emphasize that a particular group of "words" constitutes a function call, or a variable definition, or…

> Haskell is a word salad. Every line you read, you have to read multiple times, every time trying to guess the structure from the disconnected acronyms. This is a huge roadblock on the way to prototyping as well as any other activity that implies the ability to read code quickly.

I couldn't disagree more. Yes, there is more upfront work understanding Haskell code. But it's very dense. Once you understand the patterns, you can read it much quicker. Just like map/filter/fold are harder to understand then a for-loop, but once you do, you can immediately see what kind of iteration is applied. The for-loop can do all kinds of crazy index manipulation that you always have to digest from scratch.

> And then it's also spiced by the most bizarre indentation rules invented by men.

Again, quite surprised by this criticism. The rule is extremely simple: inner expressions must be indented more. You're free to decide by how much. That's why there are many "styles" out there. Maybe that's what you mean with bizarre. But it's not like the language is forcing weird constraints on you. If anything the constraints are too lax. Any other language with non-mandatory indentation allows that as well. In general, I really don't understand why not more languages do mandatory indentation. You only need curly braces and semicolons if you want the option to write a whole if/else/while/... statement in one line. But nobody does that.

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#38

Post by tmtvl »

nathan_compton wrote: post #12
busterarm wrote: post #3

I learned Scheme before Haskell and as much as I enjoyed the experience, I still wouldn't reach for Haskell first. It's pretty much limited to my xmonad configuration.

I have written a very large codebase in Scheme (gambit) and in the end I really, really, wanted a type system to catch bugs.

That's why I switched to Common Lisp, its type system isn't perfect but it works well enough for my needs (especially with the occasional (describe 'sycamore:tree-insert) in the REPL).

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#39

Post by ngruhn »

anthk wrote: post #18

I tried some ML language once, it's difficult even to write a basic factorial example, which in Scheme I could do it iteratively and recursively with ease. Either with S9 Scheme for quick fun (it has Unix sockets and ncurses :D ) or Chicken Scheme for completeneless (R5RS/R7RS-small + modules), I always have fun with both. Oh, and well, Forth, too, but more like a puzzle (altough it shines to teach you that you can d…

Haskell:

    fac n = product [1 .. n]

Re: Why I still reach for Lisp and Scheme instead of Haskell

#40

Post by floxy »

crabbone wrote: post #21

I don't believe monads are a "heavy handed abstraction" and that's what prevents people from prototyping in Haskell. What really prevents people from writing in Haskell at a reasonable speed is the poor language design. Programming languages are supposed to aid in reading by emphasizing structure. It's important to emphasize that a particular group of "words" constitutes a function call, or a variable definition, or…

>And then it's also spiced by the most bizarre indentation rules

Are you mixing tabs and spaces? Maybe an example here would help.

>overloading of literals (heaven, why???)

No, this is important, so that default strings don't to have to be something crummy. Even C++ got on this bandwagon.

>and requiring parenthesis around function arguments both for definition and for application.

??? Again, an example would be helpful. Usually the complaint with Haskell is that people don't use enough parenthesis.

>The execution model is great

...I thought lazy execution was widely agreed to be the worst part of Haskell.

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