[Haskell-cafe] What I wish someone had told me...

[Jonathan Cast]

On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 18:15 +0100, John Lato wrote:
> Are you advocating introducing existential types to beginning
> Haskellers?  I think something with the scary name

Invalid argument.

> "existential
> quantification" would greatly increase the head'splodin' on the
> learnin' slope.

Invalid argument.  Head explosion is the *goal* of teaching Haskell.

> Certainly there's a place for them, but I wouldn't
> want to see new Haskell programmers habitually approach problems with
> a "first create a type class, then make an existential wrapper"
> mentality.

Of course not.  That's just translating OO into Haskell.  Personally, I
would avoid comparing Haskell to other language at all (SOE I believe
takes this approach).

jcc