[jcranmer]

> This is sort of like PG's Blub paradox: the reader opens an article, sees a bunch of seemingly bizarre syntax and novel terminology, can't easily map it to something he/she knows from C/Java/Python/Javascript, and panics.

I analogize Blub more to Legal Latin: you're using an uncommon reference point to explain the material that could be explained perfectly well without it. The example I'd give is call/cc; I'm sure I could give a thorough description of how call/cc works, and leave a lot of programmers in the dust by doing so. Or I could explain how the yield operator works, and most of those some programmers would suddenly understand what I'm talking about. But they're basically the same thing (the only real difference being that yield continuation magic can only operate within its generator function, whereas call/cc works across function boundaries).

[the_af]

> you're using an uncommon reference point to explain the material that could be explained perfectly well without it

Should Haskell practitioners cater to C-like developers? If so, why bother with Haskell at all? This is one step removed from saying "just write an improved C and forget about Haskell", and in fact there have been attempts at it! It's just that they aren't Haskell.

Is it too much to ask of people trying to understand Haskell code to learn about it first?