[Haskell-cafe] help me evangelize haskell.

[Chris Eidhof]

On 5 sep 2010, at 09:28, Ben Lippmeier wrote:

> 
> On 05/09/2010, at 2:38 AM, Michael Litchard wrote:
> 
>> I'll be starting a new job soon as systems tool guy. The shop is a
>> perl shop as far as internal automation tasks go. But I am fortunate
>> to not be working with bigots. If they see a better way, they'll take
>> to it. So please give me your best arguments in favor of using haskell
>> for task automation instead of perl, or awk or any of those scripting
>> lanugages.
> 
> Try to avoid religious arguments like "by using Perl you're living in a state of sin", and focus on "look how much easier it is to do X in Haskell". 
> 
> Grandiose, hand-wavy assertions like "strong typing leads to shorter development times and more reliable software" don't work on people that haven't already been there and done that. When you try to ram something down someone's throat they tend to resist. However, if you can provide something tasty and appealing they'll eat it themselves. Write a nice program, show it to your Perl programmer, and if they also think it's nice -- then you've already won.

I've had success in situations with tight deadlines: the only way I got it done quickly and without bugs is by using Haskell (as opposed to PHP). Another place where you might have success is by writing a small compiler or interpreter for an internal language. Start small (in a niche, if you will) and expand upon that.

-chris