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by WhitneyLand 3371 days ago
Seems a bit contradictory. Which is it, corporate backing or novel ability?

I would like to see language advantages better quantified. How confident can we be a language is a practical improvement, in what contexts is it true, and what do the improvements buy in cost, quality, innovation, etc.

If we had all this data for a new language it would probably be easier to gain critical mass.
1 comments
willtim 3370 days ago
No one is funding these studies, so I wouldn't hold your breath. It is down to you to decide for yourself. As an anecdote, I switched to Haskell professionally 5 years ago and am both happier and more productive.
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WhitneyLand 3370 days ago
Interesting. Would you say it's the most productive language you've ever worked in?

What's your best guess as to how well this would apply to developers in general?

Once I used a tool chain with a steep learning curve, but I felt the rewards were clearly worth it. However, with that particular team it was difficult to get buy in. It seems not everyone is interested in a little pain for a lot of gain, especially if the concepts are very different.

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willtim 3370 days ago
For me personally it is the most productive and expressive language I have worked in.

There is a steep learning curve, which will make one a better programmer, but not without significant buy in. There is no free lunch.

Haskell is very expressive with its types, especially with regard to when effects happen, which makes it excellent as a shared design language. It's interesting for me to see Java/C# programmers struggle to explain some of their more modern stream abstractions to each other:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28459498/why-are-java-str...

The answers above are unable to explain succinctly what the APIs are doing, because the authors lack the necessary common language. They have to answer with wordy essays describing various scenarios and use cases.

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platz 3370 days ago
Not the OP, but I don't think Haskell will ever be drop-in replacement for mainstream langs for cultural reasons, but that doesn't mean that those who do engage w/ it don't get get tremendous value from it or fail to find it their favorite language (I.e. Doesn't contradict what willtim said). And I think that's OK. (No, you're probably not going to convince a bunch of rubyists to use haskell). You can even train entire teams of willing Haskell developers from scratch, if needed. But the desire / buy in has to be there. IMHO anyways

Part of the problem is that dev is so large that it is hard to make "in general" statements anymore.

It's easier to talk about concrete/specific instances or cases

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willtim 3370 days ago
Yes I agree. Haskell is a powerful principled general-purpose language, but not everyone will need this.

But this does not mean I am happy with the current mainstream status quo :)

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