-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday 12 March 2002 03:05, Mark Carroll wrote:

Be able to modify or add to the code base within a few weeks, in such a way that somebody doesn't have to come back later and repair your work. (-: So, no, not just the syntax: much harder, in my opinion, is to learn how to phrase even just simple algorithms in an efficient and functional way. When I first learned Standard ML, after years of imperative programming, my brain almost hurt for the first few weeks.

I think the practice of software engineering applies here as well as any other language. How hard was it for Cycorp to hire LISP programmers? (Not a good example I know) I would imagine one would have to be a little mathematically oriented for grokking the hack content of course. Any good programmer with a knowledge of declarative programming in the tradition of LISP and Prolog, IMHO, will do the job. Also I'd think that knowledge of the application domain and methods matters more than the programming language. If you require one to write machine learning code, how would you expect him to write a single line without knowing the subject? I'd imagine that persons who are experienced at any programming language which allows a reasonable level of abstraction (say C++), will be quite comfortable with Haskell. The type system of Haskell is a great win, and although the APIs are yet to be standardized (for common programming tasks) it will do a great job in many fields. I wouldn't be particularly enthusiastic about using a language like Haskell to implement a simple thing such as a "chatroom" but I would imagine it would have great benefits in research where you have to try out a lot of mathematical ideas, in complex symbolic AI tasks, in compiler design/implementation, etc. Therefore, ideally, I would look for somebody who has a) concrete programming experience b) knowledge of symbolic languages c) theoretical knowledge of your domain If I were to find that person who would be really able to program in Haskell, I would look for somebody who has done a variety of things rather than focusing on a single technology/application (just pure mathematics wouldn't do ;). That kind of a person would be able to find his way in any maze. Thanks, - -- Eray Ozkural (exa) Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8jWnvfAeuFodNU5wRAk24AJkBv0bcIdzoBeSWhURsJyYar7GmxgCgor/M k5LFIF6Fa9CWnyujr1de/D4= =9pno -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----