[Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question

[Keean Schupke]

Jason Bailey wrote:

> No offense but those are just catch phrases. They can support a 
> justification but won't work as a justification in its own right.
>
> Here are some questions that I would expect to get from business.
>
> Q:"What have I heard about this technology?"
> A: Probably nothing. Haskell isn't very well known in the programming 
> community (out of 6 co-workers asked, one had used Haskell in a single 
> college class), let alone the business community. Business has become 
> very wary about accepting technologies that are obscure.

At Imperial College (top european science and technology university) all 
DOC undergradutes taught Haskell as
main teaching language - so no shortage of top-quality trained graduates...

>
> Q:"What can I do with this language that I can't do now?"
> A:Well nothing. It can certainly do some things better then the 
> current languages out there, but its just another general purpose 
> language.

Get static guarantees that a program won't crash... programs can be 
buffer-overflow proof (list based strings)
and more reliable

>
> Q:"Will it require training?"
> A: Oh yes, we're talking about a different way of looking at programs. 
> On the surface level it should be fairly easy to pick up but it will 
> take some time before the engineers are able to produce decent work. 
> Oh and there are no training classes we can send people to. They will 
> have to learn on their own.

See answer to 1

>
> Q:"Whats the market like for Haskell programmers?"
> A: Well there isn't one. Which means that if business was going to 
> advertise for someone with haskell programming knowledge they are 
> going to end some spending a premium on them.
>
See answer to 1

> Q:"Why should we support yet another programming language?"
> A: Because this is a better language. (Wouldn't work as an answer but 
> I would give it a try. )

Its not yet another programming language - it's the future and you don't 
want to be left behind...

Keean.