[Haskell-cafe] Wow Monads!
MarLinn
monkleyon at gmail.com
Wed Apr 19 14:22:58 UTC 2017
On 2017-04-19 15:14, David McClain wrote:
> Ah Yes… I do now remember the “Race for the 5th Generation”, us
> against Japan. Lisp against Prolog. That was a fad?
I have read Haskell being described as "what M-expressions where
supposed to be". Granted, it's not compiled down to S-expressions – but
to the comparably simple Core, so the analogy has a bit more substance
than the visible sentimentality.
At the same time, in a way, our type system is a kind of Logic
Programming language. We state facts about our programs as well as rules
how to derive new facts, and the type checker tries to prove our system
to be either inconsistent or incomplete. The syntax is not as simple as
Prolog's, but that's partly due to the domain, partly because our type
language is a grown one.
In other words: After their feud, Lisp and Prolog must have made up and
spent a hot few nights together, probably in a seedy conference room in
Portland. Haskell is one of the results. Is it a perfect blend of its
parents' strengths? Ah, hell no. But no child ever is.
Which leads me to the question: Why the hell isn't there a sitcom about
programing languages yet?
Cheers,
MarLinn
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