Hacker News Reader

Comment by CJefferson | Hacker News Reader

Well, what about this article? It claims I just have to understand 4 basic concepts to replace java, python and Ruby.

Great, so using those simple properties let's reimplement Eclipse. Let me use tensor flow. Replace my Ruby on rail website.

View on HN

I replaced Rails with PostgREST, which is written in Haskell but for me as a user is just a binary that I run in front of my database, so now I don’t have to write any backend code at all.

Good enough for you?

I can see how (certain interpretations of) it could be considered wrong. I'm failing to see condescension.

The condescension is the authors assumption that this is right, and a tiny fraction of haskell can replace all uses of other major programming languages.

This to me (as a non haskell user) implies other languages can't have anything interesting to offer, as they can be so trivially replaced. That is the type of attitude I see from haskell programmers.

I see. Interpretations of that particular passage range from all the way from trivially true (Turing completeness) to trivially false (I can't build anything that uses Ruby on Rails in Haskell). Certainly there are some intermediate interpretations, like the one you suggest, by which it is condescending.

FWIW, Haskell/Yesod has replaced all my Ruby on Rails websites.

But, can you do that with a tiny boring fragment of haskell, as described in the article?

Yes. All of the Haskell we write for our business is boring. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21145872

While I'm happy you are having success and enjoying Haskell, I feel in the context of this article (you can have success in Haskell with a small easy fragment of the language), the use of the "Lens" package means you can no longer claim to be writing easy simple Haskell, unless you are using it in some way I'm unfamiliar with :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com