[Haskell-beginners] general observation about programming

[MJ Williams]

As I see it, Haskell and pure functional languages aren't
`necessarily' about readability so much as expressing thought in
mathematical terms.  The readability comes with the consistency and
transparency of well-formed mathematical notation.
by the way, that's transparency in laymen's sense and not referential
transparency.
Matthew


On 26/02/2016, Dudley Brooks <dbrooks at runforyourlife.org> wrote:
> One problem is that, while the symbolic operators do seem to have names
> (specified in the standards?) which are often sufficiently explanatory,
> you can find many tutorials which never even mention those names.
>
> On 2/26/16 1:55 AM, Mike Pentney wrote:
>
>> 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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