Hannah Schroeter wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> On Fri, Jun 04, 1999 at 12:29:45PM +0200, Friedrich Dominicus wrote:
> > [...]
>
> > > What is difficult is that by using some predefined function, one can
> > > express very much in very small code. I believe Haskell is even more
> > > expressive than most OO languages with comparable libraries
> > > (perhaps except Smalltalk, as that has also a very compact syntax).
>
> > I havn't made my mind if that is positive of negative. Sometimes it
> > remind me of Perl and I'm not a big lover from it.
>
> Somehow that's not really fair towards Haskell. Perl is made up
> of many special cases, and in some other places, you have to use
> major hackery to achieve some goal (mind the "OO" part of Perl,
> for just one example).
Now Haskell is on the other hand not quite fair to me. It makes me look
as if I never have seen or programmed. I'm not thinking I'm the king of
hacking, but I'm quite able to write some pieces of code. If using
Haskell I have the feeling to ran against a wall, if I have s.th whih is
trivial in e.g Python I have to fight to find a solution in Haskell.
Maybe that's unfairf but it's quite different from all the things I
know.
>
> > > Another difficulty is monadic I/O. Perhaps you should exercise
> > > programming with standard higher-order functions without I/O
> > > a bit more, so that you master that difficulty and don't have
> > > to *simultaneously* understand both the HOF things and I/O.
>
> > That might be good advice but I/O is one of the most essential things
> > and I have to know how to use it proper for writing small skripts.
>
> I think exercise with the purely functional, non-I/O core (and perhaps
> interact like someone else suggested) teaches you the mode of
> thinking in purely functional languages. That thinking can also
> help you understand the way I/O is implemented in a referentially
> transparent way.
I disagree, small scripts spend most of the time doing I/O if I don't
understand how to do that I'm not able to even write the most simple
things. This is eg. true for my cat ...
Till then
Friedrich
