Re: [Haskell-beginners] is Haskell practical?

Matthew, Agile is "just a process"... presumably it can deliver *anything* not just software projects. There's a lot of software people I know who look very surprised when you tell them where and why "kanban" was developed! Either way, Haskell isn't mainstream and sadly is unlikely to become so, at leat not this century unless the educational system in the UK improves markedly! Let's just all use it when and where we can and keep spreading the word! Sean. On 26 November 2015 at 09:33, MJ Williams wrote:

"lowest common denominator" Right on, Sean. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs. I would however say that the sort of culture, mindset, if you will, agile development encourages might not be entirely compatible with the thinking process and general view of the universe that FP requires. I could be mistaken on this entirely, but agile strikes me as something that would b much more at home in an essentially business-oriented environment used by people of that background e.g. people who thrive on using UML. Matthew

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I read all the above. I have to agree with KC... I have been a software developer for 30+ years now and I would dearly love to be able to use Haskell in my day to day tasks when being paid. As an IT contractor in

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UK however that just isn't going to happen. By and large the management / project planning mentality is "lowest common denominator" when it comes to large IT projects. It's not hard to understand the reasons and from a commercial and business perspective it makes sense, of course it does.

I've been working on the UK MOT programme (now complete) for the last 18 months and it was all PHP, Zend Framework 2 and Doctrine because that skill pool is huge compared to Haskell and when it comes to having a ready supply of code capable meat-sacks to deliver stories on time, LCD is where it will always be. TIOBE says that Java has been top dog for ever. I rest my case.

Us in the haskell world realise that people that can use Haskell effectively would be much more productive, and probably produce a lot more functional(!) code in a shorter space of time, have a high sprint velocity, deliver more stories etc. Quickcheck is inspired!

The thought of being on an Agile team using haskell, wow, that's too much to hope for...

All the best, Sean Charles

On 25 November 2015 at 18:13, KC wrote:

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Yes Haskell is practical except for finding Haskell replacement programmers.

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Sent from an expensive device which will be obsolete in a few months! :D

Casey

On Nov 25, 2015 9:50 AM, "Martin Vlk" wrote:

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Dennis Raddle:

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On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 4:56 AM, Alexander Berntsen < alexander@plaimi.net> wrote:

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I don't agree. Having worked for 16 years in a government aerospace contractor doing C++ and Python programming, what I saw is that maybe half the programmers struggled with precise thinking and abstraction. They thought of programs as step-by-step recipes and implemented those recipes in exactly the same way they themselves had always thought about a problem.

Also having worked as a math tutor, I see many people who struggle with abstract thinking.

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Can an "okay" imperative programmer become an "okay" Haskell programmer? Does the necessary skill, work, motivation, and talent to program at an "ordinary" imperative level serve as a sufficient prerequisite for functional programming? I really don't think so, but I could be

wrong.

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What'd be the definition of an okay programmer? If we agree that's the one that "learns how to solve a few standard problems and then applies the same thing over and over without much creativity", then I'll argue this will work with Haskell just like with any imperative language. If you train them on Haskell that is. :-)

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But I wonder if the same mechanisms that make Haskell concise (which are some of the things that make it hard) also are bound up with its practical advantages so that they can't be separated.

What you mean by practical? Does it mean that you can find enough

On 26/11/2015, emacstheviking wrote: the people

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able to use it in your real-world project, without putting too high requirements on training them?

If so, then we could say that given the current state of affairs, where the mass of okay programmers are trained on a different paradigm, Haskell is not all that practical.

But if practical means that the language is well suited for solving real-world problems, in beautiful ways, once you get it, then it is uberpractical! :-)

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