[Haskell-cafe] New slogan for haskell.org

[Alistair Bayley]

On 05/10/2007, Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com> wrote:
> >
> > So the question becomes: do you want to attract/seduce this kind of
> > programmer? Let's assume the answer is yes :-)
>
> Um... that assumpion troubles me.
> ...
> I think if we want to get anywhere we need to look at targeting people
> whom Haskell actually has something to offer. Now, if I could just
> figure out who those are... :-/

And:

On 05/10/2007, Jonathan Cast <jonathanccast at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 20:19 +0000, Aaron Denney wrote:
> > On 2007-10-05, Peter Verswyvelen <bf3 at telenet.be> wrote:
> > > If you want to attract more people that are inside the
> > > "imperative-OO-with-nice-IDE-blob", create a great looking and
> > > functional IDE.
> >
> > Bluntly, I don't see why the Haskell community needs those sorts of
> > programmers.
>
> Hear, hear.  At the company I work for, all the code is perl/web
> development --- and we wouldn't dream of hiring one of those
> programmers.


I posed the question: do we want to attract this kind of programmer?
My personal opinion, which some of you obviously don't share, is yes.

It isn't about whether or not the Haskell community needs those sorts
of programmers. It's whether or not those sorts of programmers need
Haskell.

For me, a large part of Haskell's attraction are the features which
reflect good engineering practice: strong, static type checking;
purely functional code; good FFI. It should be easier to write simple,
reliable software in Haskell than in most other languages; IMO,
getting the unwashed hordes to use Haskell would be a great
improvement in software industry productivity.

I realise that a large influx of mediocre programmers will have a
negative effect on the community, but is that a reasonable price to
pay? I understand that may of you love a small, intimate, high-quality
community, but perhaps that will have to evolve if we really want to
conquer the world.

Alistair