[Haskell-cafe] Tutorial on Haskell

[Sebastian Sylvan]

On 4/16/07, Ketil Malde <ketil at ii.uib.no> wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 13:27 +0200, Thomas Hartman wrote:
>
> > To recap: transform a piece of simple code that works in serial, so it
> > works in parallel. Maybe even a couple, or three ways: using forks,
> > using threads, using map reduce.
>
> This made me think of one of my favorite observations.
>
> You occasionally hear how the wonderful static type system just forces
> your program to be correct: if they compile, they work.  We all know
> that this is an exaggeration,


No we don't! At least not anywhere near as much of an exaggeration as that
statement would be about an strongly typed imperative language (sequencing
can't be type checked*, imperative programs are mostly sequencing, thus
imperative programs are mostly unchecked).

Strong static typing + expression-based programming + rich support for
custom data types = "if the compiler doesn't beep, the program almost always
works".

I think this is a key selling point. Not sure how to convince people it's
actually true in a 3 hour tutorial, though.


* well, you can check scoping, but that's about it, right?


> --
> Sebastian Sylvan
> +44(0)7857-300802
> UIN: 44640862
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