[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Propeganda

[Gwern Branwen]

On 2008.08.24 01:29:18 +0200, Niels Aan de Brugh <nielsadb at gmail.com> scribbled 1.0K characters:
> Thomas Davie wrote:
>> http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=654821&cid=24716845
>>
>> Apparently, no one realises that a SEGFAULT is a type error, just not
>> a very helpful one.
> Right, so here's an action plan for a clueless C-programmer:
> - Recompile program in debug mode.
> - Start application in debugger.
> - See where error happens, check out call-stack, check out local
> variables and possibly some heap.
> - Fix problem, repeat action plan if needed.
>
> Here's an error the Haskell run-time system might throw:
> *** Exception: Prelude.head: empty list
> (or whatever)
>
> So now what? Action plan = []. Perhaps Hat could help here? Or the new
> GHCi debugger? As a professional C++ programmer and a free-time fan of
> Haskell I'm not sure e.g. Visual Studio and the Haskell debugging tools
> I've just mentioned are on the same level of usability.
>
> Be careful with your propaganda before you have the real-world tools to
> back it up.
>
> Regards,
> Niels, devil's advocate, never idealistic.

What do I do? In the very rare case that it isn't immediately obvious where the head is coming from, I pull out the interlude library: <http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/interlude>. 2 or 3 lines later, I run the binary and find out the answer.

--
gwern
CESID Security Delta d DUVDEVAN SRI composition data-haven SONANGOL World
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