[Haskell-beginners] sometimes Haskell isn't what you want

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2012, Dennis Raddle <dennis.raddle at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sadly, I've decided Haskell is not the right language for my current
> project. Python is better. I need to hack together data, and strict typing
> is getting in the way. Most of my algorithms are better served with
> imperative/mutable-data. I learned a lot about Haskell trying to do it, but
> my knowledge of the language is not quiet good enough and I feel like I'm
> fighting the language. Python is better. For now.

I always recommend Scheme.

It is like Haskell in one respect:

   The Scheme Tribes keep the Ritual and the Law of Lambda.

Scheme is different from Haskell in two respects:

   We Lispers do all our coding under the Great Functor, the Great
   Functor from Code to Objects in the Lisp World.

   For most Scheme systems, the Type Sub-System calculates less at
   compile time.

Robert Harper has a new textbook available at

   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf

and here is a useful notice of the book

   http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/08/practical-foundations-for-programming-languages/

ad missing the Great Functor: See remarks on "symbols" in the
section 32.3 on page 321, and the discussion of observational
equivalence in section 47.1 on page 498.  A Lisper reading these
sections might say "Ah, the Great Functor is worthy of study by
New Type Theorists too.  We Lispers consider a symbol to be a
symbol first, and nothing else until you pass across one or more
functors, and then the symbol might become many different
things.".

ad "dynamic typing" vs "static typing": Professor Harper's blog
post

   http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/dynamic-languages-are-static-languages/

deals with this.  I think the claim made, that "dynamic typing"
is a special case of "static typing", is, when sympathetically
read, right.

oo--JS.