Andrew Coppin wrote:
Cory Knapp wrote:
As far as I know, one of the draws of Haskell is the inherent
mathematical nature of it.
It's also simultaneously one of the biggest things that puts people off.
Perhaps as we can curb this with sufficient documentation, as others
have suggested.
Actually, that was part of my point: When I mention Haskell to people,
and when I start describing it, they're generally frightened enough by
the focus on pure code and lazy evaluation-- add to this the inherently
abstract nature, and we can name typeclasses "cuddlyKitten", and the
language is still going to scare J. R. Programmer. By "inherently
mathematical nature", I didn't mean names like "monoid" and "functor", I
meant *concepts* like monoid and functor. Not that either of them are
actually terribly difficult; the problem is that they are terribly
abstract. That draws a lot of people (especially mathematicians), but
most people who aren' drawn by that are hugely put off-- whatever the
name is. So, I guess my point is that the name is irrelevant: the
language is going to intimidate a lot of people who are intimidated by
the vocabulary.
At the same time, I think everyone is arguing *for* better
documentation. And you're probably right: better documentation will
bring the abstract nonsense down to earth somewhat.
But there's a deeper problem here, one that can't be resolved inside
the Haskell community. The problem is that the "Math?! Scary! Gross!"
attitude that's so pervasive in our society is hardly less pervasive
in the computer subculture.
No arguments here!
However, that at least *is* completely beyond our power to alter.
Unfortunately.
Indeed.
Cheers,
Cory
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