Humor/Poetry

A Haskell Lover's Plea

From haskell@CS.YALE.EDU  Thu Mar 16 18:03:34 1995
From: dsmith@lucy.cs.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: A Haskell Lover's Plea

         A Haskell Lover's Plea 

Why should I renounce for you, dear Haskell,
My much yearned for side-effects?
Why should I face the software dragons 
Without my weapon, my manly spear of destruction?
They call you non-strict, oh so elegant and pure Ariel.
Yet side-effect celibacy is surely severe.

  Your flesh is too weak, you brutish beast.
  The tarpit demons of software hell await you!
  This sinful habit in which you indulge
  Does more harm than good. 
  Restrain yourself! And you too will see
  The wondrous and refined joys of referential transparency!

Alas, I can do without goto, without call/cc.
But sans side-effects, I am lost and forlorn, can't you see?
Oh, lady fairer yet than admirable Miranda (tm),
Scheme's prolix, parenthetical tedium
Is no match for your elegant syntax. What's more,
Your list comprehensions outshine even Prolog for sure...

   Ah, flatter me not, you low-spirited Caliban!
   Do you not know what advantages await
   Those who renounce destructive update?
   Start with an immaculate high-level specification,
   Throw in some algebraic code transformation.
   Soon you will have a provably correct and maintainable implementation.

Show mercy on mere mortals like me!
How I dream still of the efficient pleasures of pointer manipulation!
How I too wish to mutate memory with thoughts born of von Neumann earthiness!
Relent! Relent! Let me have my assignment, my printf, my gensym.
Let me fulfill my destructive impulses.
Let me set bang. Let me update. Let me assign. Let me mutate.

   Fear not, lowly beast, I have heard your pleas.
   To satisfy your low-level desire
   I'll give you monads, linear types, MADTs,
   Even single-threaded polymorphic lambda calculi.
   My beauty may suffer, still I will aspire
   To let you do (within typeful limits) what you please.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  I'm free! I'm free!
The best of both worlds is mine at last.
Oh, infinite progeny of Church, Hope, and ML,
I curry favor not when I say:
Scan me right, fold me left, 
Lazy lady of many shapes, you've got class.

     Don Smith (dsmith@cs.waikato.ac.nz)

Ode from a Haskeller to a Schemer

From: Benjamin L. Russell <DekuDekuplex <at> Yahoo.com>
Subject: Ode from a Haskeller to a Schemer [Was: Re: Santana on my evil ways]
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe
Date: 2008-07-07 06:26:37 GMT

Ode from a Haskeller to a Schemer

Recursion was my curse,
'Till mapping came to fame,
Parens to tail-recurse,
Fade, monads are to blame.

Let, let*, or letrec?
They were my bar and foo.
Now, monads have my neck:
What shall there be to do?

Recurse or iterate?
The processes, too late!
To map, fold, or filter:  
That is the question, sir.

In Scheme, I threw a fit:
Eval:  how to write it?
In Haskell, no more wait:
Reactive-animate!

-- by Benjamin L. Russell, July 7, 2008 (Tokyo time)