[Haskell-cafe] How Albus Dumbledore would sell Haskell

[Mirko Rahn]

Thanks for your answer, I think it emphasizes that my example matches 
the exclaimed conditions

 >>        * small
 >>        * useful
 >>        * demonstrate Haskell's power
 >>        * preferably something that might be a bit
 >>                tricky in another language

> It's easy to encode this in some object oriented language with generics, 
        ^^^^
[some dozen lines of java]

> The haskell solution may be much shorter, but it is far from impossible 
> to encode such things in a plain-and-boring mainstream language like 
> java. The promotional value of this (and similar) examples shrinks down 
> to "haskell code is much shorter". Wich is true, and important, but may 
> not be enough to consider learning some crazy programming language.

Okay, nobody sayed its impossible. GHC compiles Haskell programs to some 
kind of C. But first: Shorter code has less chances for bugs and is 
easier to maintain...

More important: Correct me, if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand 
java, it is still impossible in your solution to evaluate the equivalent of

head $ mirror $ rel [ (i,i) | i <- [0..] ]

in finite time, that is, your MirrorRel is not lazy in the elements. You 
have to build this also by hand and your code becomes even longer and 
more complex.

> (Java developers who don't understand Java's advanced features like 
> generics and anonymous classes may not be able to write or understand 
> the above written Java solution; but do you expect them to understand 
> Haskell?)

Add 1: This statement contradicts your "easyness" claim!?
Add 2: In contrast, the Haskell solution does'nt uses "advanced Haskell 
features" (whatever this might be), it consists of 6 lines of plain 
Haskell 98 only.

Regards,

-- 
-- Mirko Rahn -- Tel +49-721 608 7504 --
--- http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/~rahn/ ---