[Haskell-cafe] Ode from a Haskeller to a Schemer [Was: Re: Santana on my evil ways]

[Benjamin L.Russell]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 15:43:38 -0400, "John D. Ramsdell"
<ramsdell0 at gmail.com> wrote:

>My son's nickname is Rama, so let me adopt it.  I am a functional
>programmer, even when I use languages such as C.  Scheme facilitated
>my development into a functional programmer, however, I appreciate the
>benefits of pure function programming at times.  Yet when I use
>Haskell, I hear reminders of my Scheme past cast in the music of
>Santana.  The words I hear are set to "Eval Ways":
>
>You've got to change your evil ways... Rama
>Before I stop respecting you.
>You've got to change... Rama
>And every word that I say, it's true.
>You use strange syntax and typing
>And offset rules
>You don't mutate locations
>You use strange do's
>This can't go on...
>Lord knows you got to change.
>
>John

Haskell poetry?  Here is my Scheme -> Haskell story; since you have
written your story as a poem, I have written mine, in the style of
Japanese court poetry, as a poem in reply:

Ode from a Haskeller to a Schemer

Recursion was my curse,
'Till mapping came to fame,
Parens to tail-recurse,
Fade, monads are to blame.

Let, let*, or letrec?
They were my bar and foo.
Now, monads have my neck:
What shall there be to do?

Recurse or iterate?
The processes, too late!
To map, fold, or filter:  
That is the question, sir.

In Scheme, I threw a fit:
Eval:  how to write it?
In Haskell, no more wait:
Reactive-animate!

-- by Benjamin L. Russell, July 7, 2008 (Tokyo time)