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

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2012, Darren Grant <therealkludgy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just adding another perspective: I developed the AI for a complex
> turn-based strategy game in C++. By the end of the process I found
> that I was not only continually repeating myself due to the language
> syntax because I needed a *lot* of specialized list manipulations, but
> I was also effectively composing pure functions.
>
> This made me think that it could be much more effective to develop AI
> in a functional language. There's no way I could do this with Haskell
> presently as I am still struggling to approach all problems from the
> FP perspective first, but I do think there is the potential.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Darren

I know of no decent taxonomy of programs.  For example the Linux
kernel runs, at least on my machines, for the great majority of
my loads, for literally years without trouble.  Most of the time,
my standard stack of Emacs, quack, and Aubrey Jaffer's SCM, works
just fine, though occasionally the repl-Emacs connection fails to
behave properly.  Usually one of a small standard set of repair
tricks works to restore the repl.  The famous "Unix pipeline of
filters" is an example of part of the stuff that Functional
Programming advocates advertise.  And spreadsheets are an example
of another one of the advertised advantages.

Now these four things, the Linux kernel, the Emacs-SCM short
stack, a Unix one liner, and a spreadsheet system, are all
programs.  They differ in presentation and in use and in
implementation.

Here is a missing book (I am aware of the just attack that this is too easy.):

   A Taxonomy of Computer Programs

which would have at least one chapter for each of the the four
kinds of programs.

oo--JS.


>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 6:34 AM, Anindya Mozumdar
> <anindya.lugbang at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I went back to it
>>> for one day (yesterday) and that was enough to make me realize how
>>> unpleasant its inconsistencies, inconsistent documentation, awkwardnesses,
>>> etc.
>>
>>> Haskell is a gift and I'm not throwing it away.
>>
>> Luckily this is a small list, otherwise a flame war would have started by now.
>>
>> Personally, I learnt the basics of Haskell in the year 2000 in
>> college. I am re-learning it again, and it's an absolute delight. I am
>> not a programmer by profession - and this is the only language which
>> *makes* me want to learn it as I am generally interested in math and
>> bit of CS theory. It's also interesting to note that Haskell is being
>> used in finance, and maybe I will get to use it professionally one
>> day.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Anindya
>>
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