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I've used a lot of languages, including Clojure and Scala. I'm saying any time spent learning Clojure when Haskell exists is a waste of time and a half-step.

Everybody who hasn't should be learning Haskell, regardless of background.

Teaching somebody Haskell is faster than explaining why the 1,001 dumb things mainstream languages do are dumb. I don't want to waste my time explaining why null values are dropdead stupid when I can just show them "Maybe".

We can talk about where we're headed after that.




I find it funny to hear such grandiose claims about a language that can has yet to create a major killer project. That's why I can never bring myself to write Haskell. Show me the Storm, OTP, Datomic, Netflix, Whatsapp, etc. written in Haskell and perhaps I'll have a reason to change my mind. But until then all I see is C#, Scala, Erlang and Clojure shipping awesome products and the Haskell guys sitting in the corner saying "You're not doing it right!!!"


Haskell's community is a bit more thoughtful and less prone to self-promotion. That combined with the fact that you're not a Haskeller, you're not familiar with what they've built.

Another issue is that Haskell is somewhat weighted towards finance and they're a bunch that tends to be somewhat proprietary about their IP. Some exceptions (Ermine) exist.

Some notable projects that come to mind include git-annex and Parsec. Parsec has been preeminent parser-combinator library since forever.

Also: pugs, pandoc, gitit, Darcs, xmonad, Idris (same person that did whitespace, haha)

Recently? Cryptol. That's pretty major.

I'm building stuff in Haskell, right now. Specifically, the easiest to use Elasticsearch client in the world.

One was needed. Badly. The ES API's data structures were never specced out properly, just documented on an ad-hoc basis. The Haskell library I'm working on will, if nothing else, mean that there's a reference for how the JSON is structured.

Anyway, empower thyself, learn some Haskell: https://gist.github.com/bitemyapp/8739525

Edit:

Ah, I thought I knew that username from somewhere. The negative-nancy is Timothy Baldridge, an employee of Rich Hickey's company Cognitect. Cognitect is "the" Clojure company and represents the inner-clique.


"That combined with the fact that you're not a Haskeller, you're not familiar with what they've built."

On the other hand, I don't have to be a php'r to know facebook was built in that language or a C++ programmer to know what google has done with it.

The negative-nancy is Timothy Baldridge, an employee of Rich Hickey's company Cognitect.

By personally attacking a critic of your claims, you're only making your case weaker.


> personally attacking

Personal attack? What personal attack? Are you reading the same comment I am? He identified someone. If identification amounts to a personal attack, then that would seem to indicate severe problems with the image of the person being identified!


"The negative-nancy is Timothy Baldridge, an employee of Rich Hickey's company Cognitect. Cognitect is "the" Clojure company and represents the inner-clique."

Apart from the juvenile "negative-nancy", there's also the clear implication of ascribing untoward motives based on the person's identity.


> The Haskell library I'm working on will, if nothing else, mean that there's a reference for how the JSON is structured.

Well, some projects document systems in MS WORD, you are using Haskell for documenting JSON structures. That's a step up.


[deleted]


Please stop this—all of you.

Programming language flamewar is off-topic and inappropriate for HN. The personal attacks are beyond the pale.


> xmonad is stable.

> haskell + smart programming practices guarantee a crash

> free experience.

Yeah dwm, crashes all the time.

Why don't you try another approach to functional programming, like http://www.shenlanguage.org/ ?

If you think Haskell is The One True Way™, get a new pair of sun glasses.




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