On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 02:16:38PM -0600, Nicholas Kormanik wrote:
I am not a programmer, and have no intention of becoming one. I'm a stock and options trader. MetaStock is one of the primary programs I use. Other statistical and mathematical programs as well.
Very often when some small need arises, I Google-search for a solution. There seems to be any number of freeware utilities out there in cyberland -- and more all the time -- that do pretty much whatever is needed.
Additionally, Mathematica (as one example) has a powerful programming language built in.
So, my question is: Does it make practical sense to spend time learning Haskell for the purpose of adding it to my assortment of 'tools' -- to quickly do this or that, as the need arises?
Is there any better general practical 'tool' (or, if you want, 'programming language') to add to my arsenal.
Thanks for your comments and suggestions.
Nicholas Kormanik
I think the choice of which language really depends on the problems you want to solve. But rest assured: once you've learned the first language, learning more is simpler... As a first language, I would definitely go (as I did, in the past) for Python. The basics are easy to learn, it's great as general purpose language, it's well supported and has a massive user base. The standard library is very complete and there are additional high quality libraries to do mathematical and statistical analysis (google for numpy, scipy, pandas, pytables, ...). I would choose Python 2.7, and avoid 3.x to be able to choose from more libraries (just a small subset have been ported to 3.x). If you find programming interesting (as we all here do, I believe), than, once you've familiarized with Python, you should definitely give Haskell a try: I'm a beginner in Haskell, but I can say it's been the most enjoyable language to learn so far. hth, L. -- Lorenzo Bolla http://lbolla.info