Burning bridges

[Casey McCann]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
<ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you missed my point... I'm not saying it's just because of the
> course I'm tutoring, but that I disagree with the contention of
> "people learning Haskell will pick this up relatively easier so we
> should just dismiss anything about not generalising because it will
> make it easier for new people".

There are arguable benefits to avoiding ad-hoc polymorphism at the
very beginning when teaching programming, yes. I actually agree there.

The Prelude is already hopeless on that front because of Num (and
possibly Monad). It is very, very easy to get many of GHC's least
helpful error messages as a beginner making minor mistakes with
numeric literals. If the monomorphic approach is what you want, then
do it properly and use a monomorphic alternate Prelude or a Haskell
environment other than GHC, either of which the students ought to be
more than capable of installing and using. Students averse to mental
effort and following simple directions are why God invented "failing
the course".

- C.