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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

Not really. No. And that's the problem! You're right that semantics are what make the languages truly different. However it is literally impossible to even begin to understand semantics if you don't know the syntax. That's what is so frustrating. It might as well be written in Kanji. That's how meaningless it is to me and, I believe, most programmers.

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That's the thing though. Because you have a ton of experience with C++, then you'd probably be able to pick up ruby, python quite quickly (if you don't know them already), because despite the superficial syntatic differences, their semantics are, in the grand scheme of things, close enough to those of C++. You'll trip up on some of the subtler differences, but you'll have a relatively easy time interpreting what the differences mean. When you first look at haskell, the underlying semantics are different enough that your prior experience scarcely helps you interpret the different syntax. Cue howls of frustration.

What you're saying is like arguing that the Japanese should switch from Kanji to Latin characters because more people worldwide use them. That's the language, it's not going to change. It's just silly to criticize Haskell/Japanese for not being immediately understandable without study.

No. That's wrong. Completely wrong.

All I'm asking for is a Kanji to Latin dictionary. It's not about changing Haskell syntax. And it's not about "studying" the syntax. Haskell has funny syntax with funny symbols. That's totally fine. I just need someone to say "see this symbol? that means cat!" Most tutorials do a terrible, terrible job of that.

Which introductory tutorials have you read?

I know I've been through this in college. To each his own, but I believe Haskell is too much higher order logic for people to start with it. By having deeply strict principles (lazy, immutable, monad, curryfication,...) they managed to craft a language very tiny and very abstract, too abstract as a starter. These principles are very easy ones when they're explicit. I can be shown in scheme to an average coder with no issue.

Try to understand haskell (naive not in-place) quicksort http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction#Quicksort_in...

"Most programmers"? I started learning Haskell without previous knowledge of any functional language. The syntax was as strange to me as C was when I first picked it up.

The problem (I think) is trying to translate your knowledge of C or C++ syntax to Haskell, when they are so different. Try learning Haskell from scratch. Don't assume anything. Learn it like you would learn Japanese :)

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