[Haskell-cafe] New slogan for haskell.org

bf3 at telenet.be bf3 at telenet.be
Mon Oct 8 14:05:54 EDT 2007


At my school the students are learning C/C++ in the programming courses, but
I'm teaching them a tiny bit of Haskell in the math courses, and most of
them seem to love it. I think every programmer should see an imperative,
object-oriented and lazy functional language, at least (and maybe also
Prolog...). And if you really want to have control over what the computer is
doing, stick to assembler... but who is still doing that these days?

-----Original Message-----
From: haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org
[mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Conway
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 12:55 PM
To: Don Stewart
Cc: haskell-cafe at haskell.org
Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] New slogan for haskell.org

I just had a conversation today that seems relevant to this thread. I
was chatting with a friend who is working in the academic sector, and
I was observing that Melbourne Uni (my old school), is switching in
the new year from teaching Haskell as a first language, to teaching
Python. I was dismayed, but not surprised.

Anyway, I was talking about this with my friend said that he
understood the main reason for the change was that students were not
being "switched on" or excited learning Haskell as they used to be
learning C. He put it down to the fact that in C, you are more
obviously "making the computer do stuff", and that Haskell is
sufficiently high level and abstract that beginner programmers don't
get that thrill of feeling like you're making the computer work for
you.

I must say, I get that! but at the same time, of course, the high
level abstraction is exactly what *we* love about Haskell.

cheers,
T.
-- 
Thomas Conway
drtomc at gmail.com

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy:
I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
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