[Haskell-cafe] Line noise

[Philippa Cowderoy]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2008, Andrew Coppin wrote:

> Actually, none of these things were mentioned. The things people have
> *actually* complained to me about are:
> - Haskell expressions are difficult to parse.

This is partly an "it's not braces, semicolons and function(application)" 
complaint, though not entirely.

> - Several standard library elements have unhelpful names such as "elem", "Eq"
> and "fst". (My favourite has to be "Ix". I mean, WTH?)



> - Several standard library functions have names which clash badly with the
> usual meanings of those names - e.g., "break", "return", "id".

For this one, I'm inclined to say "welcome to a new paradigm". Though 
having to tell my dad briefly that do isn't a loop construct was odd for a 
moment.

> - Variable names such as "x" and "f" aren't fabulously helpful to lost
> programmers trying to find their way.
> 

So don't use them? Though I think f in particular has its place in higher 
order functions.

> The people I
> spoke to also seemed pretty confused about the usage of (.) and ($), even
> after I explained it a few times. Several people also voiced being puzzled
> about Haskell's layout rules.
> 

Pointless style is definitely newbie-unfriendly. I can understand being 
puzzled by layout: ultimately I had to go read the description in the 
Report to be happy.

> I'm not sure what we *do* with all this data, but I found it interesting so I
> thought I'd share. ;-) I've spent the last few years trying to convert a few
> people to The Haskell Way(tm), but so far I haven't succeeded in the
> slightest. I just get yelled at for pointing white noise. Heh. Oh well!
> 

Have you tried showing people code that's been syntax highlighted? It's 
likely to help, especially with things like "does function application 
bind tighter?" where the highlighting is something of a cue. So is marking 
out = as important!

Btw, (> x) reads much more easily as a predicate to most people than (x 
<=).

-- 
flippa at flippac.org

Sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire. Most
of the time you just get burnt worse though.