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by eklavya 3377 days ago
Why is it not ok to be complicated/complex if it's worth it? People do not complain about the complexity of a car compared to a cart, it's just doing much much more. It's ok to want a cart for whatever reason but I don't understand why then you have to say that a car is bad?

A lot of people are happy writing Haskell. In fact they seem to like it so much that they would kill for a Haskell job!
1 comments
rimliu 3377 days ago
How much more does Haskell do compared to other languages? Does it posses some unique properties which puts it high above other languages? Back to cart and car comparison: despite several levels of magnitude difference in complexity the difference in complexity to operate is not that great. That is, you are not directly exposed to the underlying complexity. Meanwhile programming languages should be optimised for reading first.
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seagreen 3377 days ago
> Meanwhile programming languages should be optimised for reading first.

Interesting, because I totally disagree with this. My preference is for programs designed for safety and amenability to static analysis first. Maybe there's a reason I'm not a Python dev anymore=)

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sjayasinghe 3377 days ago
It's more about familiarity with the abstractions provided by the language.

Sure, the complexity difference in operating a cart vs a car is not that big. But if someone has never seen a car or familiarized themselves with how to operate one then the perceived complexity is going to be enormous.

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scriptkiddy 3377 days ago
Arguably, A person who is familiar with the operation of a cart would be at least somewhat familiar with the operation of a car in that they both roll in a specific direction based on user input.

That said, the complexity of operation in a car arises from increasing the number of controls from 1 to, at minimum, 10. I would say the cart to car analogy is more akin to learning a complex API.

I would say that a better analogy for traditional languages vs. Haskell is that of a car to a fighter jet. The fighter jet is faster and really really good at certain things like movement on 2 planes and firing missiles. However, the fighter jet is orders of magnitude more difficult to operate and requires much more maintenance. For real world concerns such as getting groceries or transporting furniture, a car is the much more practical choice. I mean, we'd all love to own a fighter jet, but would any of us really have a use for it other than screwing around?

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