On 12/6/05, Donn Cave wrote:

Quoth Jimmie Houchin : ... | Haskell looks like a very interesting language. I am only so-so with | Python and I thought that maybe if instead of spending sufficient time | to get proficient with Python, I could invest a similar time (more or | less) and get reasonably (pragmatically speaking) proficient with | Haskell. I know I may never understand the theory and maths behind the | design, but I believe I can appreciate the design and be a decent user | of the tools it provides.

I'm coming from a similar background, Python early adopter (well, they do have something in common! Just something sort of trivial.) and no great math background.

I find Haskell MUCH more mentally rigorous. I don't think that's just because I have previously been living in "imperative" land, it's because Haskell gets far more abstract. I have lately been thinking I might see if I can achieve a clear understanding of StateT. Not in any theoretical or mathematical sense, just want to understand how it goes together where honestly right now it seems kind of like magic. Not complaining, there could be worse things than magic like that, but I'm just saying our mathematical ignorance doesn't excuse us from some mental heavy lifting that doesn't compare to anything in Python.

Then there are performance issues with Haskell that don't come up in other languages. I have tried to do things like analyze big text files with Haskell and given up, because I could not figure out how to get within an order of magnitude of reasonable completion time. I still think it's possible, though maybe not with standard String type, but anyway it's something to look out for.

You might wanna have a look at Don's FastPackedString library: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/fps.html

| I am also hoping to use it for web development.

Wonder how `links' is coming along. (Hope they figured out a better name, anyway.)

Got an url for the project? -- Friendly, Lemmih