[Haskell-beginners] haskell platform

[DJ]

On 16-01-13 03:44 PM, Rein Henrichs wrote:
> DJ, FWIW:
>
> The policies of the various OS-level package managers tend to make it 
> difficult for maintainers to update
<snip>

Ok, thanks for explanation. I happily use Linux Mint for all kinds of 
stuff with no problems relating to package versions. But it looks like 
stack is the way to go.

Rambling here:

I left Haskell three years ago or so in disgust. I was in grad school at 
the time and was compelled to use it by my supervisor. IMHO the Haskell 
ecosystem back then was a fucking pile of shit. It was fine for the 
researchy stuff I was doing (not in programming languages, exactly). But 
a total uphill battle to actually write anything else in. And no, this 
is NOT just about struggling to overcome imperative PL mindset.

I felt that learning Haskell gave me all the wonderful advantages of 
being fluent in Esperanto.

It turns out that /to this very day/ I am totally devoid of fucks to 
give about Haskell's theoretical beauty and "if it compiles I just know 
it's right".

I now need to interface to a huge amount of stuff for scientific, 
numerical, and graphical software that is already written in C, C++ 
(which I detest) and sometimes Fortran. I guess that means I mostly need 
glue, which means one thing: Python. and when I /do/ have to write 
something from scratch I am much more comfortable in (gasp) Common Lisp: 
a little-used language with (compared to Haskell) very few theoretical 
scruples. I tend to use an sorta-kinda functional style in CL. I must 
admit that I sometimes do miss a good type system. But not 
must-do-state-in-monads.

So anyway if there has been some kind of reasonable improvement in the 
ecosystem I may recover some of the investment I put into learning FP. 
Or not. Maybe it's sunk costs.

I have know idea why I wasted my time and yours by blurting all this out 
in response to your helpful post. Perhaps I had a minor stroke that 
destroyed the neurons responsible for self-editing and self-awareness. 
So I guess I'll be joining the Tea Party soon.

Bye for now....

- DJ -
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