[Haskell-cafe] Compiling To C And Why Not Compiling To Java Or C#?

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Kaveh,

Sunday, August 6, 2006, 12:54:01 PM, you wrote:

>> how can we decrease Haskell popularity?

> Why? Because someone must prevent mean programmers to try Haskell? Or
> it is a bit of old holy codex? Or maybe I must feal tired of hearing
> newbies questions?

all the three and especially the last one: i hate answering stupid
novices questions, especially at Friday's evening! :D

moreover, it's more exciting game than debating how to raise
popularity. i've just reread Wadler's paper i mentioned and tend to
somewhat disagree with him:

Wadler wrote that FP is unpopular not because average programmer
"stupidity". I can agree that FP by _itself_ don't need light brains.
In fact, if i will sometime teach a beginner programmers, the first
language i will show to him will be a functional or logic one - they
are most close to the human's nature of thinking

but current FP languages is very far from the basic FP concepts! may
be because they was developed by scientists, but they involve very
complex concepts to accomplish the everyday tasks. using of monads
just to organize IO is best-known example

so, imaging that i will lead some young programmers with average
brains (and i had sich experience using C++) i'm not sure that FP
language will be equally easy to master as OOP ones

on the other side, it's highly possible that the real cause is that
during high school courses students are teached to think in imperative
style. developing the better methodologies of FP teaching (or may be
they are already developed - i don't read "School of FP", for example)
may change this situation, but at least now i think it's harder to
teach FP programmers than OOP ones.

on the other side, this very high level of FP paradigms makes the
Haskell interesting for experienced programmers who just want to break
their minds :)  but this has nothing common with business :D


-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com