[Haskell] Haskell as a disruptive technology?

[Johannes Waldmann]

Paul Johnson wrote:

> Is there a market that is poorly served by the incumbent languages for
> which Haskell would be an absolute godsend?

yes - teaching principles of programming (and languages).

E. g. I have my students (2nd year) learn (some) Haskell first,
so they will hopefully understand better what is a (polymorphic) type
and what is behind those OO-design patterns
(Composite => algebraic data type, Visitor => map/fold,
Template Method => higher order function etc.)

But the comparison to e. g. Java also shows quite clearly
that Haskell is lacking some features (ranging from essential
to convenient) in the area of software engineering (module system,
record system, annotations, etc., see some entries on Haskell-prime)
And I don't hide that opinion from the students.

You may say that my teaching is "disruptive",
but then, there's no "market" since the students have no choice ...
But most of them accept the challenge. (I'm afraid they'd accept
an advanced Perl(*) hacking course as well.) (*) - replace with
name of any untyped interpreted scripting language.

Best regards,
-- 
-- Johannes Waldmann -- Tel/Fax (0341) 3076 6479/80 --
---- http://www.imn.htwk-leipzig.de/~waldmann/ -------