Re: [Haskell-beginners] an observation about Haskell vs. Python

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:33 AM, Dennis Raddle wrote:

In Haskell you give up easy-to-comprehend error messages and mutable data, and get back in reward a lot of reassurance that your program does what you meant and expressivity.

It's an interesting observation you made earlier, thanks! I'd also add that the gnarlier errors are because of code maxing out the newer innovations of the type system. Haskell98, comparatively, isn't half as terrifying. But type safety is a drug. You never get enough of it. One way to contain the complexity is to note what packages viralize their pragmas, i.e. require client code to turn on the same pragmas that they do. -- Kim-Ee On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:33 AM, Dennis Raddle wrote:

Thanks. I'm okay with the status quo.. I just see it as a tradeoff. You are giving up something to get something. In Python you give up any kind of compile-time type checking, you give up the safety of immutable data, and you get a whole lot of automatic type conversions and brief ways to express certain algorithms. In Haskell you give up easy-to-comprehend error messages and mutable data, and get back in reward a lot of reassurance that your program does what you meant and expressivity. (I realize Haskell has mutable data but it's not like Python's)

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 7:43 PM, Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:

...

Notice: You probably forgot to apply `sin' to an argument.

However, I think that no work is done on that, and there is another possible path: An average Haskell tutorial should always include a section on understanding error messages. In fact the latest issue of The Monad Reader [1] has an article on that by Jan Stolarek.

[1]: http://themonadreader.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/issue20.pdf

Greets, Ertugrul

-- Not to be or to be and (not to be or to be and (not to be or to be and (not to be or to be and ... that is the list monad.

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