[Haskell-beginners] general observation about programming

[Mike Pentney]

As a newbie, something I dislike about Haskell is the use of infix operators like <||> which are 
unpronouncable and therefore (if you don't happen to know the notation the symbol is based on) 
are more or less meaningless.

And Haskellers often seem to prefer 1 and 2 character variable names, which again convey little 
or no information.

And don't get me started on point-free code...!

N.B. I am not trying to start a flame war, these are just comments from my experience of trying 
to get beyond text-book examples and start using Haskell libraries and trying to learn from open 
source code. In general I find idiomatic Haskell hard to understand, and for me this is a 
barrier to using Haskell for real projects. Maybe someday I'll have learnt enough to get past 
this problem, but as the language and libraries seem to evolve quickly, I have my doubts...


On 25/02/16 19:19, Jeffrey Brown wrote:
> Something I like about functional programming is how it interfaces with natural language.
> Haskell, somehow to a greater extent than other languages, encourages me to divide functions
> into one or two-liners. Each has a type signature that means something in English. Further, each
> gives you the opportunity to choose a good name for the function and its arguments. After doing
> those things, the function is much easier to write, and much easier to read -- so much so that
> often you don't have to read the function body at all, just the type signature, function name
> and argument names.
>
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Dudley Brooks <dbrooks at runforyourlife.org
> <mailto:dbrooks at runforyourlife.org>> wrote:
>
>     Ages and ages ago I saw this advice about programming:
>
>     Q:  "What's the best language for a programmer to know?"
>
>     A:  "English" (or whatever your native language is)
>
>     -- Dudley
>
>
>     On 2/24/16 4:03 PM, Dennis Raddle wrote:
>
>>     This is more about programming in general than Haskell, although Haskellers probably know
>>     it well.
>>
>>     I don't claim to have expert knowledge on this, but I'm gradually getting better at it.
>>
>>     When I set out to write a program, or refactor a program, or modify a program, it helps to
>>     set out my thinking in a clear way. And how I make it clear is to document my thoughts.
>>
>>     An outline is one good way to organize thoughts and is probably my main tool. But good
>>     English prose is also helpful.
>>
>>     The key factor is "editing." In what sense do I mean that? Good writers do it, and the
>>     Haskell documentation does it. I mean (1) brevity and (2) good flow. To achieve brevity,
>>     you must think about the essence of each statement and trim away the unnecessary stuff.
>>     Good flow refers to how the document builds up and modifies your concepts as you read it.
>>     A document can actually mirror an effective learning process, or influence and change your
>>     process.
>>
>>     I work with my documentation, making several editing passes. By the time I'm done, I am in
>>     a great position to write a concise and flexible program.
>>
>>     It's interesting that not only is Haskell a concise language, but the Haskell library
>>     documentation is concise. Contrast that with the Python documentation which often wanders
>>     about into areas that are irrelevant--it could easily be cut into one third its present size.
>>
>>     Mike
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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>
>
> --
> Jeffrey Benjamin Brown
>
>
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