On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:13:43 -0000 (GMT), you wrote:
world. It also highlights some of the misconceptions that still exist and need to be challenged, e.g. the idea that Haskell is too hard or is impractical for real work.
Haskell _is_ hard, although I don't think it's _too_ hard, or I wouldn't be here, obviously. Haskell is hard in the sense that in order to take advantage of its ability to better solve your problems, you have to THINK about your problems a lot more. Most people don't want to do that; they want the quick fix served up on a platter. And even the "intermediate" camp, the ones who are willing to invest some effort to learn a better way, are only willing to go so far. My analogy for this is the Sams PHOTOFACT series (If you're not old enough to already know what these are, visit http://www.samswebsite.com/photofacts.html). With an appropriate Sams PHOTOFACT in hand, and some very basic skills with a voltmeter and maybe an oscilloscope, you can diagnose and repair your TV with virtually no understanding of electronics at all. The audience for programming languages like Haskell is always going to be small, because it appeals to those who want to understand how the TV works, perhaps to the extent of being able to modify an existing TV or even design one from scratch. And those kind of people are much fewer and farther between than those who simply want to localize the problem enough to be able to unplug the malfunctioning part and plug in a new one. It makes sense to publicize Haskell; you can't take advantage of something you've never heard of. But I think evangelical effort is largely wasted. The people who are going to gravitate towards Haskell are the ones who are already searching for something better (they just aren't sure what it is). The rest aren't really interested, and if at some future point they become interested, they'll find the way on their own. Steve Schafer Fenestra Technologies Corp. http:/www.fenestra.com/