[ericssmith]

Parsec was Haskell's 'killer app' for me, but I tend to do most tasks in it now that involve some kind of data processing. Economical syntax, strong support for function composition, pattern matching, and type classes are the main draws for me. I have also learned to appreciate enforced purity and the abundance of operators, two of the biggest hurdles coming from stateful, imperative, mainstream languages. I prefer a development style in which small, single-purpose 'components' can be built up in the REPL and plugged together. Haskell is very well suited to this. Especially once I realized the GHC compiler was really telling me useful things and not just trying to piss me off. I have a love/hate relationship with lazy evaluation.

[fusiongyro]

Nine times out of ten, when I'm done using Parsec I find myself wishing I were using Happy and Alex instead. Parsec seems to be powerful and liberating to a lot of people but I guess I had lex and yacc drilled into me hard enough that I haven't managed to let go yet.