| >By the time I reach cardinality I wonder if maybe the author is more interested in making things sound intimidating than helping? I'm overstating my case in that post, but underestimating how hard this currently is doesn't change that there are things you'd want to understand before diving into a Haskell web application. Part of this is on the framework designers, it's mostly/only Scotty that has made any attempt not to incorporate concepts that would be difficult for beginners and it's more "hiding" than "not using". You don't need 100% grokhood all along the way, but the current status quo is that people frequently flounder and burn out because the resources they _did_ use didn't explain things usefully or cover enough. This is not conjecture, this from a _lot_ of time spent working with people hands on via IRC and Skype and curating a popular guide: https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell >"Why can’t I learn Haskell the way I learned $BOZOLANG?"
>...I hope the book itself won't encourage the stereotypes about Haskell the way this post does. The stereotype that I grew up reading c2 wiki and hacker lore? I've spent most of my career so far writing C#, VB.NET, and Python. I don't even really mind a bit of Python here and there, but I don't have much cause to resort to it any more except for Ansible. As it stands, our readers have been taking breaks from the book to successfully work on side projects starting at about chapter 9 through chapter 26. Different people find there are different spots in the book where they can step away and get things done. The point is that the rest of it is always there if they need it. Education-by-blog-diaspora has not been terribly successful for many Haskell beginners up to this point. Partly because there aren't enough people for there to be enough angles on something that beginners can reliably find something that "clicks" for them. Another problem is that you want exercises to thoroughly understand a different way of thinking about and putting together programs. In the end, it feels little different in my head than when I'm writing in something imperative, but the experience is more difficult than it needed to be for beginners for a long time. The book is me "scaling up" my ability to help people. Like it or don't, whatever, but please don't try to make a blog post I wrote into something it isn't so you can try to take me down ad hominem. >...I hope the book itself won't take this tone. The community doesn't need it. You can find out what the tone of the book is by checking out the sample provided on the book's website. No need to speculate. As it is, the tone is light but to the point. Readers have enjoyed the dry humor which is not at all like how I write on my blog. Which people have liked too. You should spend less time on HN commenting on things you don't like. I have writing to do. Goodnight. |
You're right. I shouldn't have implied anything about the book based on this blog post. That's unreasonable. I have things I dislike about this post, but that doesn't imply anything about your book.
I should've been clearer when I first wrote my post that there's no major content in your post that I disagree with. There are a lot of things to learn before you can write actual applications in Haskell (I've been at it for awhile, and am just really getting to understand Monad Transformers). But I do think that paragraph is a bad way to put the point. It reminds me of when a student two years older than me tried to intimidate me by asking if I knew what a RECIPROCAL was.
I also think that the $BOZOLANG comment is a bad idea. Haskell has a stereotype that it's users look down on everyone else. You may think it's a nice little joke, but I'm not sure if it will translate to people who already worry about whether they're smart enough for Haskell.