| Personally, I love Haskell and wish I can use it more. This article does not do justice convincing people to invest time to learn it. Is this like the curse of teaching monads? Once you know them you lose the ability to teach someone else about them? > If we sincerely ask "why learn Haskell?", then we wind up learning Haskell! No. We wind up doing a search for "Why learn Haskell" and unfortunately this article might pop up. And if we don't see a benefit or pain point being removed we aren't going to learn it. They don't even make an argument for why. They just jump into a philosophy lesson on logic. That's not an argument for learning Haskell and is completely tangential. The basic rules of copywriting requires that you understand your target audience and make a case for how their life will better. > The gold standard is a logical reason. LOL. No, it's not. The gold standard is an emotional reason.
Perhaps this is why Haskell has not taken off. What pain point does it solve or what benefit does it give you? For me personally, it has expanded my thinking and allowed me to write clearer and more concise code in other languages. It has allowed me to think in terms of new concepts that increase the reach of what I am able to do. Its type system provides for safety as well as making the intent of programs clear. Pattern matching allows you to specify your intent much easier and conveniently than the typical imperative approach. The compiler is your friend and reminds you if you fail to take into account all possible scenarios (total function). The syntax may seem strange at first, but I have come to love it and wish other languages had adopted such a clean syntax devoid of visual clutter. The gold standard reason for me is that I am able to tackle, think, and solve higher levels of complexity than are possible in other languages. I am able to express myself much more fluidly and I am able to reuse code to a much higher degree. |