[Haskell-cafe] Channel9 Interview: Software Composability and theFu ture of Languages

[Kirsten Chevalier]

On 1/26/07, Collin Winter <collinw at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have a PhD in computer science from Princeton, so your measure of
> what's "hard" and what isn't in this regard is nearly worthless.
>
> I find it incredibly insulting for you to assert that people who
> complain about Haskell's difficulty are too lazy and aren't really
> interested in a better solution. Maybe they just don't want to have to
> take graduate-level classes in category theory to get their job done.

I've never taken a graduate-level class in category theory, or any
course on category theory, and I'm a Haskell implementor. So perhaps
the people who think they need to taken graduate-level classes in
category theory in order to use Haskell are barking up the wrong tree
(or perhaps I'm not a very good Haskell implementor, which is always
possible.)

> Maybe they want a solution that meets them half-way, one that doesn't
> require that they understand how to build their own resistors and
> capacitors in order to make their TV work again (to use your analogy).
> That's what Meijer means when he says that Haskell is too hard.
>

On the other hand, Meijer also has a PhD in computer science... is his
judgment on Haskell's difficulty or lack thereof worthless, too? If
not, then surely, judgments about whether Haskell is too hard can't
have much to do with who has a PhD and who doesn't.

Cheers,
Kirsten

-- 
Kirsten Chevalier* chevalier at alum.wellesley.edu *Often in error, never in doubt
"Would you be my clock if I promise not to hang you / Too close to the window
or the picture of the pope? / I won't set you back and I won't push you
forward / I just want to look in your face and see hope" -- Dom Leone