<br><div class="gmail_quote">> This is at odds with the notion, popular on this list and other haskell forums, that pure functional programming is the future.<br><br>Perhaps a nit-pick, but I don't think we're talking about *pure* functional programming. I think we're talking about a mixture of functional and imperative programming in a functional language. Haskell offers a cleaner separation between the two than, say, Scheme or ML. The idea of pure functional programming (no explicit IO) for getting real things done is much more of a lunatic fringe vision, and I'm not sure there are many of us left pursuing that vision.
<br><br> - Conal<br><br><br>On Dec 11, 2007 9:34 AM, Tim Newsham <<a href="mailto:newsham@lava.net">newsham@lava.net</a>> wrote:<br>
<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d">> I haven't been following this thread closely, but would it be rude to suggest
<br>> that someone who doesn't want to put the effort into learning the (admittedly<br>> difficult) concepts that Haskell embodies shouldn't be using the language?<br>> Haskell was never intended to be The Next Big Popular Language. It was
<br>> intended to be a purely functional language for people who want to use purely<br>> functional languages and who are willing to learn new concepts if it enables<br>> them to program in that style.<br><br></div>
This is at odds with the notion, popular on this list and other<br>haskell forums, that pure functional programming is the future.<br><br>Why is it that every time the topic of teaching basic concepts in<br>an easier way comes up there are always two or three replies that
<br>say "should we bother? lets filter out the idiots?" These are<br>pointless and counterproductive. Whether or not you like the idea<br>of lesser entities sullying your private, pure, functional programming
<br>language, there are going to be a lot more people learning this<br>language, and there will be people trying to make it easier for them<br>to learn it.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> whatever. That said, of course we should strive to have better teaching
<br>> materials, but there are a number of good IO/monad tutorials on the web.<br></div>[...]<br><div class="Ih2E3d">> because it enables us to write programs more effectively (in many cases, at<br>> least) than we can in other languages, but the learning curve is steep --
<br>> there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.<br><br></div>Many of the best resources for learning Haskell are still academic<br>papers published by language researchers. We've still got a long<br>long way to go... Sure there's no shortcut to learning difficult
<br>concepts, but right now its more of a nature hike than a freeway...<br><br>> Mike<br><font color="#888888"><br>Tim Newsham<br><a href="http://www.thenewsh.com/%7Enewsham/" target="_blank">http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/
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