[Haskell-beginners] an observation about Haskell vs. Python

[David Hinkes]

With python (and any other non-compiled language for that matter) the unit
testing is very important.  I almost think of the unit tests as the
compiler (does that make sense to anyone but me?).

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 3:15 PM, Dennis Raddle <dennis.raddle at gmail.com>wrote:

> As a somewhat-newbie haskell user and longtime Python user, what I have
> observed is this.
>
> Haskell creates compile-time error messages that are somewhat hard to
> understand for beginners.
>
> Python (or any scripting language) creates run-time bugs that are hard to
> understand.
>
> One reason for the weird (to a beginner) compile errors in Haskell is its
> expressivity -- almost any sequence of identifiers could potentially mean
> something, and if you make a mistake, the compiler is sure to find some
> "weird" way to interpret it.
>
> But Python suffers from a similar problem -- it's not as expressive a
> language, but it is very permissive, not insisting on type correctness,
> order of arguments, or any of a number of things so that the programmer can
> write a program that compiles with no errors -- but has strange run-time
> bugs.
>
> I'll take Haskell. I'm a bit OCD about getting the bugs out of my
> programs, and Python just opens up too many holes for me to relax with it.
>
> Dennis
>
>
>
>
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>


-- 
David Hinkes
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