Andy Schmidt wrote:
Hi, my name is Andy Schmidt and I stumbled across this website as I started my quest for the best programming language. I am only in college and I am trying to learn as many languages as I can. I hope haskell will be the one I stick with. -Andy
I don't think you should focus too much on sticking with one language. It's better from a commercial standpoint to have knowledge of more than one language, specifically Java or C++. The advantage of learning a language like Haskell is that you'll be a better programmer because of it, or 'The purpose of learning a programming language is to become a better programmer' [The C++ Programming Language Special Edition, B Stroustrup, pgage 6] . From a practical perspective a language like Haskell will teach you functional programming idioms, which advanced C++ users are recently beginning to work into the C++ language. For example, the Boost (www.boost.org) group have implemented a C++ version of the Haskell fold function. Also Microsoft are rumored to be jumping onto the functional language bandwagon with a F# (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1102795,00.asp). It looks like it's trying to be a clean mix of functional and imperative language idioms. From a practical perspective, unless you want to pursue a career in academia, you should focus on a language like Java or C++, since these are far more marketable than Haskell. This may change in the future. You'll also have to deal with IT recruiters one day and to them HTML and Haskell both start with H so they must be similar. I recently spoke with one that said 'in-tee-gah, is that how you say it?'. I corrected her pronunciation of integer but didn't bother to explain what it was.