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

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 8:24 AM, David Hinkes wrote:

I almost think of the unit tests as the compiler (does that make sense to anyone but me?).

Absolutely! There's also quickcheck, which is semi-automated fuzz testing. All this contributes to greater awesomeness in every line of code. -- Kim-Ee On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 8:24 AM, David Hinkes wrote:

With python (and any other non-compiled language for that matter) the unit testing is very important. I almost think of the unit tests as the compiler (does that make sense to anyone but me?).

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 3:15 PM, Dennis Raddle wrote:

...

As a somewhat-newbie haskell user and longtime Python user, what I have observed is this.

Haskell creates compile-time error messages that are somewhat hard to understand for beginners.

Python (or any scripting language) creates run-time bugs that are hard to understand.

One reason for the weird (to a beginner) compile errors in Haskell is its expressivity -- almost any sequence of identifiers could potentially mean something, and if you make a mistake, the compiler is sure to find some "weird" way to interpret it.

But Python suffers from a similar problem -- it's not as expressive a language, but it is very permissive, not insisting on type correctness, order of arguments, or any of a number of things so that the programmer can write a program that compiles with no errors -- but has strange run-time bugs.

I'll take Haskell. I'm a bit OCD about getting the bugs out of my programs, and Python just opens up too many holes for me to relax with it.

Dennis

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-- David Hinkes

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