[Haskell-cafe] New slogan for haskell.org

[Dan Weston]

 >  *  Static typing, which increases robustness by allowing the
 >     compiler to catch many common errors automatically.
 >
 >  *  Type inference, which deduces types automatically and frees
 >     the programmer from writing superfluous type signatures.
 >
 >  *  Higher order functions, polymorphism, and lazy evaluation,
 >     which enable higher levels of abstraction and more
 >     compositional, thus more reusable code.

"frees the programmer from writing superfluous type signatures" is a 
weak (and dubious) advantage. I very often write "superfluous" type 
signatures first (to be sure I know what I'm asking my program to do) 
and only then let Haskell check it. Then I leave it in as good 
documentation.

Also, if you're going to stress the benefits for the casual or new 
reader, maybe you should spell them out explicitly:

  * Static typing

    - Compiler automatically infers a static type for every expression, 
completely eliminating any potential for runtime type mismatch errors, 
and checks any programmer-supplied type annotation for correctness. The 
absence of silent typecasting also eliminates a whole class of 
hard-to-find program logic errors.

  * Higher-order functions and polymorphism

    - Encourages higher-level abstraction and unshackles algorithm 
design from implementation details.

  * Lazy evaluation

    - Separates the concerns of the called function ("what can I 
provide?") and the calling function ("how much do I need to know?") and 
facilitates "borrow-from-the-future" techniques where useful with 
infinite data structures or recursive algorithms.


Thomas Schilling wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 20:31 -0800, David Fox wrote:
>>
>> On Nov 26, 2007 11:38 AM, Thomas Schilling <nominolo at googlemail.com>
>> wrote:
>>         
>>         Haskell is a general-purpose, pure functional programming
>>         languages
>>         that puts many interesting results from research into a
>>         practical
>>         programming language.  It's features include:
>>  
>>  I think it is stronger to say "many powerful results" rather than
>> "many interesting results".
> 
> Yes, good!  
> 
> Also it should be "its" rather than "it's", but I didn't want to reply
> to my own message since it was meant as a draft to work with.
> 
> I'd like to turn this into a refinement of a concrete proposal.  I
> skimmed the original thread and it pretty much diverged into experience
> reports or meta-level discussions on what or how to advertise Haskell.
> This has its place, but I think we can get to a description that is good
> enough for now and addresses Don's issues mentioned in the
> thread-starting message.
> 
> So, I would welcome more concrete adjustments to my proposal.
> 
> / Thomas 
> 
> 
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