On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 17:13 -0400, Steve Schafer wrote: > On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:05:43 -0700, Jonathan Cast wrote: > > >No reason not to expose newcomers to Haskell to the thing it does best. > > This is precisely why newcomers flounder.
Newcomers flounder because they expect to keep programming the same way they always have. They should be (and *are*) taught better ways of doing things. > Yes, there certainly should be > a "Haskell for experienced Java/C++ programmers : All of the advanced > things you can do more easily than you ever thought possible." But > that's not the way to attract Joe Programmer, who has never had to write > a parser. Joe Programmer needs to be shown how Haskell can solve _his_ > problems. That might mean that you need to start with an extremely > non-idiomatic Haskell program, one that has some of the "look and feel" > of what programmers from other languages are comfortable with. Try it. I guarantee you, it'll turn people *off* Haskell, and they'll never see your more elegant replacement, because they'll never read the fifth chapter where you stop fighting the language and start working with it. jcc _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
