My Haskell Journey from C#

Thanks for the write-up. Really hit the spot for me as someone who doesn't want to get pigeon holed into C# forever.

IMO an under-appreciated weakness of Haskell is its culture of poor code quality and engineering practices, e.g. in how code is structured, (not) commented, or named.

Example, inspecting a graph in Haskell via fgl, we encounter the foundational Decomp type [1]:

    type Decomp g a b = (MContext a b, g a b)

Second example, the simplex algorithm [2]:

    addart :: (Num e, Enum a, Ix a, Num a) =>
              Array (a, a) e -> Array (a, a) e
    addart a = array ((-1,0),(n,m+n)) $ z ++ xsi ++ b ++ art ++ x
        where z = ((-1,0), a!(0,0)) : [ ((-1,j),0) | j <- [1..n] ] ++ [ ((-1,j+n),a!(0,j)) | j <- [1..m] ]
              xsi = ((0,0), -colsum a 0) : [ ((0,j),0) | j <- [1..n] ] ++ [ ((0,j+n), -colsum a j) | j <- [1..m] ]
              b = [ ((i,0), a!(i,0)) | i <- [1..n] ]
              art = [ ((i,j), if i == j then 1 else 0) | i <- [1..n], j <- [1..n] ]
              x = [ ((i,j+n), a!(i,j)) | i <- [1..n], j <- [1..m] ]
              ((_,_),(n,m)) = bounds a

Haskell and its culture have significant weaknesses from an engineering perspective.

1: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/fgl-5.6.0.0/docs/Data-Gr...

2: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/dsp-0.2.4/docs/src/Matri...

I have also had a journey with Haskell. I really enjoy Haskell and have worked hard on developing skills. That said, there often seems to be other languages that seem better for me, for individual projects. Machine learning? Usually need to use Python. Web development? Hard to beat Rails for productivity. Enterprise Systems? It is usually written in Java. Doing ‘research programming’ to explore data and ideas? I usually favor Common Lisp, but sometimes use Haskell.

For me, I think Haskell will always just be a language I very much like but only occasionally use.

The key to Haskell is to think like a functional programmer. Most of us are trained to think in ways other than functional programming. This is a skill that takes time to build, and a book can't necessarily impart upon you.

A issue with today's programmers is that they require instant gratification from their programming languages. Remember that it takes a large investment to learn a foreign language. The more you learn, the more you can express. Haskell and FP takes times to master because they are powerful tools that allow you to express complex ideas succinctly.

So don't get discouraged if it seems foreign, it is. With Haskell you can say a lot with a little, and it will pay dividends for years to come.

Wonderful. That's like driving a Lamborghini with a school bus steering wheel.

All those things do on a web page is make it hard for people to read your (presumably interesting) message.

I even tried to override the font-weight and text-align in the developer tools, but for some reason that didn't work like it usually does, and I didn't have the patience to pursue it further.

If you could please make this look like a normal website - dark text on a light background, no flush justification, and normal font weight - I would be able to read it. Thanks!