[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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