Re: [Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

On 7/18/07, Martin Coxall wrote:

On 7/18/07, Jon Harrop wrote:

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On Tuesday 17 July 2007 23:26:08 Hugh Perkins wrote:

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Am I the only person who finds it interesting/worrying that there are few to no people in the group who are ex-C# programmers. I mean, you could argue that C# programmers are simply too stupid to do Haskell, but ... you know, there is another explanation ;-)

To understand this, I think you must look at the number of technical users for each language. There are a huge number of technical C++ and Java programmers but a tiny number of technical C# programmers in comparison. The few technical C# programmers are migrating to F# because it is next door and F# programmers are better looking.

Most C# programmers are (a) GUI programmers and (b) former VB programmers. This means they are *guaranteed* to be less attractive that the average C++ developer. I have proof. But it's too big to be contained in this margin.

Martin

I heard that Fermat didn't even actually have a proof. You wouldn't be trying to hoodwink us in the same way, would you? :) I haven't been paying attention to the subject, but I suppose I should pipe in now. I really enjoy Haskell. I'm probably like most people here in that I like learning new languages: I've given Scheme a fair shot; F# captured my interest for a while, and right now I'm toying with Erlang. I've tried Python, used Perl for a job, determined after an hour that PHP wasn't for me, and even looked at Ruby. The list goes on. (Always, of course, I keep GHC on my computer.) But for work, I use C#. And I, for one, am looking forward to C#3.0, because it will be easier to apply my FP experience to problems when FP is the better way to solve a problem. (You've heard the maxim that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail; the flip side of it is that when you've got a whole tool set including a screwdriver and you see a screw, but your company only lets you use your hammer, it can be frustrating to beat on the screw with the hammer.) And since I'm fresh out of college with no experience, I'm neither in a position to even suggest a language change in my company, nor do I have the experience to move to the occassional Scheme or Erlang job opening I see (I don't know if I've ever seen a Haskell job opening, and I'm guessing if I did it would get snatched up by a more qualified programmer quite quickly). I guess the point being made is that there are a smaller percentage of attractive programmers in C#; but it looked to me that people were implying that there are /no/ knowledgeable programmers in C#; and I'd just like to assert that maybe there are some that don't really have a choice right now. :) Bryan