[ffn]

Absolutely, Haskell has a richness of concepts to it that's entirely in a class of its own... but that being said, Haskell is to programming what sex is to life (for a woman... because men's natural enjoyment of sex throws off my following analogy). Granted there is richness and joy in finally discovering it, one needs to realize it's important that one isn't forced into it too early. Haskell demands a lot of thinking up front and therefore requires a programmer of a certain logical / organizational maturity in order for the process not to be frustrating and painful (or even traumatizing). Haskell (like C, Lisp, and the arcane slog known as Erlang) should rarely be someone's first language.

And that's where Ruby, Python, Javascript, and to some extent Matlab come in. For whatever else people may say about them later (they don't scale, they're a roadblock, they're a mess, null is not a function, etc.), they were there for you when you were programmatically young and they introduced you gently into a world that's otherwise extremely complex.

After all, programming, like literally everything else, is 99% human and 1% logic, machines, data, "scaling", etc. Programs are written by people for people (incidentally they can also be read by a computer), so it's incredible important that the 99% of that equation (you the programmer) don't become discouraged at the onset by an extremely elegant, expressive, but rather rapey language before you're ready for it. In that sense, it's absolutely okay to be "seduced" by an easy scripting language in the beginning. Eventually, though, when you start lamenting about "undefined is not a function" and how that could be so easily avoided when proper type-checking, that's your body telling you that you're ready for Haskell now.

[dragonwriter]

> And that's where Ruby, Python, Javascript, and to some extent Matlab come in. For whatever else people may say about them later (they don't scale, they're a roadblock, they're a mess, null is not a function, etc.), they were there for you when you were programmatically young and they introduced you gently into a world that's otherwise extremely complex.

Well, no, they literally weren't there for me when I was new to programming. (MATLAB existed then, but I wouldn't actually see it for more than a decade.)

And while I don't think they are bad languages for beginners, I don't see a clear argument presented as to why they are superior for that purpose (just a somewhat vulgar analogy that presumes that people share your subjective opinions about the languages involved.)

[autoreleasepool]

> (for a woman... because men's natural enjoyment of sex throws off my following analogy)

Pro tip: If your analogy needs a disclaimer that perpetuates gender stereotypes for it to work, then its probably sexist.

[gr8b8m8-88]

The parenthetical statement by ffn, although a bit tongue-in-cheek, is largely "men want sex more than women." Which, judging by the statistical consumption of porn across the world, is resoundingly true. I get your point about not perpetuating gender stereotypes, but the whole spirit of that movement (feminism, equality, what have you) is to not perpetuate gender stereotype types where they are irrelevant - as in when sex is not directly involved (e.g. leading a corporation, programming a computer, playing with children, etc.)... But you will literally not find a field where sex is more directly involved than sex itself. Granted there are always exceptions, but the statement that "man want sex more than woman" is sexist the same way "man is physically larger than woman" or "woman have higher % body fat than man" is sexist.

In other words, it's sexist in the sense that we recognize there is a biological difference between the sexes - we're not applying it to infer men are automatically rapists, or women are automatically unable to make executive decision. So maybe instead of playing around with labeling terms that carry a lot of negative connotations, you can actually consider the circumstance and context of what is being said before you label.

[throwaway232]

so men want sex more than women because of some statistic that you didn't even bother to fully pull out of your ass? nice

[gr8b8m8-88]

Here's a study (scroll to page 6 for the table):

http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Gender_Differences_in_Porno...

Now combine that with some data from Christian Rudder's Dataclysm (just a link to a info-pic + summary article here):

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-09-04/mining-okcup...

Men consume a lot more porn than women and hunt for casual sex a lot more than women. Actually, if you weren't so rustled, you could've just google'd "consumption of porn by gender" and gotten a lot more results than the two I put up there. But yeah, way to not walk away and accept that someone else has a valid point, and feel free to continue loudly cry "no, your stats suck", "give more sources", while hiding behind a throw-away account and throwing out sensational accusations of "sexism!" for the sake of accruing karma on your main one.

[sridca]

Taking only graphic porn into consideration is a bias; women consume 'porn' in the form of romance novels.

"By and large, men prefer images and graphic sex sites; women prefer erotic stories and romance sites." - http://rescuefreedom.org/parallax/wp-content/uploads/2015/01...

[autoreleasepool]

For the record, that really isn't me. I didn't think your comment deserved a response so I ignored it. I don't have a way to prove it to you. Sorry.

[QuantumRoar]

I agree, except for the sex analogy. You could've easily went with something like:

Haskell is to programming what bugs are to food. Both are functional, an acquired taste and look scary from the outside.

[nbouscal]

> they were there for you when you were programmatically young and they introduced you gently into a world that's otherwise extremely complex.

This may be true for you, but it is not true for everyone. You assume that learning Haskell as a first programming language would be more difficult, but you don't present any evidence to support that claim. People who have done so disagree with you.