This one's easy to answer: When I studied Scheme, I did not have an uncontrollable urge to pore through arcane papers trying to find out what the heck a natural transformation was, or a Kleisli arrow, or wonder how you can download Theorems for Free instead of having to pay for them, or see if I really could write a program only in point-free fashion. Nor did I use to take perfectly working code and refactor it until it cried for mercy, and then stay awake wondering if there was some abstraction out there I was missing that would really make it sing. You can debate the role of Haskell as a programming language per se, but when it comes to consciousness-raising, the jury is in...Haskell is my drug of choice! Dan Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
Dear Haskell Cafe members
Here's an open-ended question about Haskell vs Scheme. Don't forget to cc Douglas in your replies; he may not be on this list (yet)!
Simon
-----Original Message----- From: D. Gregor [mailto:kerrangster@gmail.com] Sent: 30 March 2008 07:58 To: Simon Peyton-Jones Subject: Haskell
Hello,
In your most humble opinion, what's the difference between Haskell and Scheme? What does Haskell achieve that Scheme does not? Is the choice less to do with the language, and more to do with the compiler? Haskell is a pure functional programming language; whereas Scheme is a functional language, does the word "pure" set Haskell that much apart from Scheme? I enjoy Haskell. I enjoy reading your papers on parallelism using Haskell. How can one answer the question--why choose Haskell over Scheme?
Regards,
Douglas
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