Re: [Haskell-cafe] In what language...?

2010/10/25 Gregory Collins

Andrew Coppin writes:

...

Hypothesis: The fact that the average Haskeller thinks that this kind of dense cryptic material is "pretty garden-variety" notation possibly explains why normal people think Haskell is scary.

That's ridiculous.

That's not so ridiculous in the sense that some people might (wrongly) think they won't understand haskell until they understand at least some of that cryptic material. Many long discussion about Haskell on reddit seem to have a beginner thinking he must "understand monads" before going on. Yes, the  famous monads which aren't that complicated at all, still they are part of this dense cryptic material when you're a newbie that used to think he's smart because he knows c, pascal, basic, php , and learned postscript's basics in a few days (Then you start looking at this curiosity called haskell, and you stumple upon haskell-cafe, and then you are humbled.) (I might be talking about the 3 years ago me, here :) )

You're comparing apples to oranges: using Haskell and understanding the underlying theory are two completely different things.

Agree 100%, but it's not automatic to see it that way for a newcomer. David.