Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

chrisdone.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 124 posts

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#31

Post by colordrops »

navait wrote: post #29

As much as I love Haskell, one problem with the intro to CS courses is that many of the students are not CS majors, but students from other disciplines that need to learn a little bit of programming. It makes sense here to teach Java and Python, as imperative languages are more useful to real world programming than functional languages. Perhaps it would be better to create a separate intro course for CS majors. On th…

At my university, pragmatic programming courses were part of the math department. If students want to learn to program, perhaps they should take programming courses rather than CS courses, instead of compromising the education of full-time CS students. The courses do have to be available though, and not all universities provide them unfortunately.

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#32

Post by pjmlp »

CJefferson wrote: post #15
mathetic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am looking forward to the day the notion that functional languages are not suitable for developing software will die. It is not only that functional languages are more succinct, easier to reason about and are more readable, they also often come with significantly better type systems. Some have type systems sophisticated enough to specify nearly all the legal states and guarantee these are the only states the progra…

That day will come, for many of us, when a large AAA game, web browser, or usable OS is written in a FP language. And I realise that is an unfair target, but there is very little user facing FP software. The only one I can think of I have used is xmonad, which is both hard to use and fairly buggy

You mean like Crash Bandicoot, Abuse, Jak and Daxter?

Or maybe Genera.

Or maybe Remote Agent software used by Nasa Deep Space 1?

Or eventually the train control systems running on software from Siscog?

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#33

Post by megaman821 »

I was attending UT during this time period, but luckily it took until my senior year before the Java-fication of nearly every class was complete.

My intro class used Dr. Scheme, and I think it worked very well for introducing new concepts. Following classes were mostly C++ with some C and assembly mixed in. When they finally introduced Java it took students a couple days learn it since they all had decent C++ backgrounds from previous classes. I don't think that would work in reverse, a Java background is not going to let you pick up C++ in a couple days. That is what the department did not understand, not knowing Java isn't that much of a determent to getting an entry level Java job. With a solid foundation, a junior programmer can pick up Java quite fast.

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#34

Post by brianchu »

FWIW, UC Berkeley's intro CS course sequence goes through the following languages in order: [Scratch (in an optional gentle-intro CS course)], Python (with an emphasis on using it for functional programming), a tiny bit of Scheme, a tiny bit of SQL (before they used a toy logic programming language), Java, C, MIPS assembly. I think this walks down the ladder of abstraction very nicely.

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#35

Post by hnriot »

jfaucett wrote: post #8

I don't see why they don't just teach C, x86, and Haskell everywhere. If you know the concepts behind these, you can quickly grok any other programming language. Also I never got the whole hype behind OOP. IMHO its self explanatory, nothing you need an entire course on to be effective and understand OOP programs. Memory layout and management, advanced pointer concepts and monads are a slightly different matter. If I…

I'm not sure pointer concepts are very difficult, pointers might confuse people that didn't grow up with assembly language, but they really aren't very hard to understand and they are also less and less relevant. Over the years the abstraction level increases, it's far better to teach people to continue computer science to the next 21st century level, not go over stuff from the 70's again that they will likely never use. The breakthroughs in CS coming very likely won't be written in C (or assembly for that matter).

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#36

Post by tormeh »

There's a link on the page to this essay by Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1012...

It's overall badly (at least foggily) written, but I find this quote really on point:

>The moral of the story is clear: real programmers don't reason about their programs, for reasoning isn't macho. They rather get their substitute for intellectual satisfaction from not quite understanding what they are doing in their daring irresponsibility and from the subsequent excitement of chasing the bugs they should not have introduced in the first place.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I think people think C/C++ is an acceptable tool for anything besides drivers and kernels, for which they're only acceptable because there's no better alternative. Sure, pointer-pointers is a magnificent idea! I'll totally keep that under control!

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#37

Post by Arwill »

weeksie wrote: post #25
Arwill wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, people finish their CS study, and do not have such level of knowledge that they could start working right away. So Haskell might be nice, but is hardly a sought for skill. Sure if students would learn different stuff by themselves, they could learn useful skills too, but most of the students are lazy, and only learn what they have to.

This is the worst attitude. University is not supposed to be vocational school.

No, the worst is when you get to talk with people fresh out of college, and you can't give them a job, because they are useless. Sober up people.

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#38

Post by tormeh »

brianchu wrote: post #34

FWIW, UC Berkeley's intro CS course sequence goes through the following languages in order: [Scratch (in an optional gentle-intro CS course)], Python (with an emphasis on using it for functional programming), a tiny bit of Scheme, a tiny bit of SQL (before they used a toy logic programming language), Java, C, MIPS assembly. I think this walks down the ladder of abstraction very nicely.

I particularly like that they walk the ladder of abstraction downwards, not upwards. I'm not totally convinced, but I have a strong hunch that walking down that ladder is more pedagogical than walking up. At least in math I have a much easier time reading the proof if I know what it's trying to prove beforehand.

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#39

Post by cheepin »

brianchu wrote: post #34

FWIW, UC Berkeley's intro CS course sequence goes through the following languages in order: [Scratch (in an optional gentle-intro CS course)], Python (with an emphasis on using it for functional programming), a tiny bit of Scheme, a tiny bit of SQL (before they used a toy logic programming language), Java, C, MIPS assembly. I think this walks down the ladder of abstraction very nicely.

Odd to use Python as your intro to functional programming, since it lacks many functional programming features besides lambdas which the language creator doesn't even like (http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196)

Re: Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

#40

Post by aidos »

Arwill wrote: post #18
jfaucett wrote: post #8

I don't see why they don't just teach C, x86, and Haskell everywhere. If you know the concepts behind these, you can quickly grok any other programming language. Also I never got the whole hype behind OOP. IMHO its self explanatory, nothing you need an entire course on to be effective and understand OOP programs. Memory layout and management, advanced pointer concepts and monads are a slightly different matter. If I…

The problem is, people finish their CS study, and do not have such level of knowledge that they could start working right away. So Haskell might be nice, but is hardly a sought for skill. Sure if students would learn different stuff by themselves, they could learn useful skills too, but most of the students are lazy, and only learn what they have to.

The pursuit of knowledge shouldn't be dampened by silly things like getting a job. It's computer science after all.

Aside from that, learning Haskell at university has eventually made me a better programmer. It gives you a whole other world outlook and that's useful once you finally start figuring out how to build reasonable software.

Post reply on HN