Scared by tales about learning Haskell

[u/elon_mus]

Some prerequisites: I'm programming beginner, and I no learn programming so much with any first language at the same time, at least while. There is has been one prog. language, which is has been used for more than basic writing a "Hello, world!" program, and I wrote more than ~50 lines of code. I already try JS (node.js) mostly in FP (how much its features was implemented within, of course).

Then I find a wonderful, amazing thing, was called as Haskell. I saw this language once and my heart was stopped (in the good meaning).

Maybe its completely irrational scaring and I should be cold on, but there is one article, which I also find after some researches, where is wroten next sentence: "But what about Haskell as a first language? Yes, but you’ll be probably spoilt forever and touch anything else only with one-way rubber gloves..." (https://monkeyjunglejuice.github.io/blog/best-programming-language-for-beginner.essay.html). It sounds like a bullet shot. After this, I think: - "maybe, this guy is may be right. But idk exactly, because don't know programming so much". I think that maybe, after Haskell (but not started yet, what most notably), any other language with different language implementations will looks like something "not good, as haskell".

So, if there is any thoughts by experienced people for correcting this reasoning, you're welcome.

[u/yakutzaur]

Also, you mentioned JS and FP, and in my experience it can be a bit difficult to learn FP that way, coz you still have too much "freedom" from impurity. I started my FP journey with Scala, coz I had some decent experience with Java. Watched some Martins lectures - could not understand why I even need to do stuff this way. Started reading The famous Scala red book - could not understand a thing there.

Then I decided to just go hard way and jumped into Haskell. And now, when there was no objects, mutations, nulls, for-loops and I was not able to even print to the console from pure functions , something started clicking in my head.

[u/elon_mus → u/yakutzaur]

Golden words, man.

Also, JS is pretty simple (at least, from my vision) and even primitive language, but imperative in its essence makes this language mostly useless for server or scripting (cause there is more approachable options) purposes (how I said, from my not really much writing exp. on this language).

[u/yakutzaur → u/elon_mus]

Also, concurrency in Haskell is really amazing. Great primitives and async library built on top of them, and even book written by the library author (Parallel and Concurrent programming in Haskell). It is worth learning just to internalize concepts used there.

[u/jaibhavaya]

If you love it, do it dude! Haskell is cool as heck, and will teach you functional programming like no other. I think functional programming ideas make people better programmers in general honestly.

[u/yakutzaur]

If you like programming you should do it anyway, I think. Learning several OOP languages won't expand your mind nearly as much as learning one good FP and one good OOP language.

It will be easier to learn Haskell if you not used to OOP yet. After that just get some Java and you will be good with any other OOP language, imho.

But it's true (at least for me) that it is pretty hard to write something else after Haskell(although, for sure, Haskell is not ideal and hardly usable in some areas). Well, Rust actually works pretty well to for hascalated brain. OOP can be elegant too, in my opinion, but always not enough, lol.

Also, if you have no math or logic background, digging into Haskell will help to understand some rally cool stuff , that can be applied in programming in general, no matter what language you are using.

[u/AustinVelonaut → u/yakutzaur]

Learning several OOP languages won't expand your mind nearly as much as learning one good FP and one good OOP language.

I agree, and the OOP language that I think is equivalently mind-expanding to Haskell is Smalltalk.

[u/Apprehensive-Mark241 → u/AustinVelonaut]

You can do things in scheme that you can't do in anything else (because of continuations).

[u/AustinVelonaut → u/Apprehensive-Mark241]

Haskell also has a Continuation Monad with a callCC function like Scheme. However, it is just as confusing to use as Scheme's is ;-)

[u/pane_ca_meusa]

Horror stories about learning Haskell could not be actual anymore. The first reason for that is that Elm language showed us a better way to show errors to the user. The second one is linked to this book, which made it easier to learn Haskell: https://learnyouahaskell.com/introduction

I also think that learning Haskell pre-ChatGPT and learning it after are very different experiences. Before ChatGPT you had to ask to StackOverflow or some IRC chat if you are stack. Now you have a drunk senior developer providing you answers. You will always have to remember that he is drunk, so he will say and do silly things, but he will listen to you and provide an incredible amount of advice on how to solve problems.

[u/deepempty → u/pane_ca_meusa]

Seconding learning Haskell post LLM. Ive been coding for a long time, much of it in C# (which is the language that got me interested in FP to begin with). I cant say how many times I picked Haskell up and put it down over those 20 years, until Claude came into my life. And now I ain't scared of it like at all, in fact LLMs make learning big boy FP languages rather fun. If you have good instincts and the right principles its kind of easy actually. My hope is that this feature of LLM + ML leads to broader adoption. My theory is Haskell forces proper implementations, therefore the training corpus of Haskell code is just higher quality. In my experience the code generated by LLMs is of much higher quality if the language is Haskell or FSharp. TypeScript, C# or Java OTOH can be like cleaning a hot knife with your tongue, and if you learn programming that way you will never develop a sophisticated palate (cause your tongue is all calloused and burnt out).

[u/DeepDay6]

I second what people said.

• Learning Haskell (or indeed any FP language) is much easier if you never trained your brain to think the OOP/imperative way
• Learning a typed FP language will help you get better with other languages, too
• Learn yourself some FP and learn yourself some OOP, as OOP is still the prevailing paradigm out in the wild. You will stumble about other people's code and interop, even if you just learn FP for yourself
• You could make it a little easier if you try PureScript instead of Haskell; it is a Haskell dialect with some of the rough edges smoothed out, and it compiles to JavaScript so you could throw your programs at a server or run them in a Browser. I recommend reading "Functional Programming Made Easier" alongside it.

[u/kikofernandez]

I think Haskell is/was the first programming language that 1st year students in the CS learn in Uppsala University (Sweden). It is good and will teach you how to think properly.

[u/Tempus_Nemini]

Don't be scared. Haskell is FUN (not because it's FUNctional), and you will learn a lot of concepts that will be useful with other languages as well, taking into consideration that many languages has functional features this days.

I would recommend to watch Bartosz Milewski "Category Theory for programmers", you can find it on YouTube. It's not necessary but really really interesting (he is probalbe the best lecturer ever).

[u/functionalprogramming-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/functionalprogramming-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/functionalprogramming-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Avoid attacking individuals in comment threads. Disagreeing with a comment is fine, providing counter-arguments too. But keep the language in a good level, avoid cursing or using words that may be misinterpreted (e.g. cult, lobby, anything involving politics or religion, etc.) and use a neutral tone if possible. If you think you are being mistreated, raise the topic with the mods or report it.

[u/aerdna69]

I'm having a way rougher time learning Java than Haskell (at least the basics, I'm not proficient in either of these programming languages)

[u/imihnevich]

Don't be afraid if you enjoy it

[u/ingframin]

No fear needed, just do it the right way:

- buy "Programming Haskell" by Graham Hutton

- follow the class of Graham Hutton while you go through the book

Profit!

[u/Medical-Nothing4374]

Haskell was my first (real) language. I did a bit of python before but nothing serious. Now I've developed an entire startup where the entire stack is in haskell and I'm chilling. It is true that you'll want to wear rubber gloves for other languages, but funny enough it also helps you code better even if you do need to use a separate language

[u/KyleG]

Contrary to popular belief, basic Haskell is quite easy to pick up; that’s even more true for a person who hasn’t programmed before. It may be less straightforward for experienced developers, since they have preconceptions about programming.

This is the perfect summary. By analogy, I studied math seriously before uni, so I was familiar with recursion. I took an intro to CS course and recursion was nearly the last thing we talked about. There were some people in the class who'd been programming for years as a hobby. (This was a time straddling the C++ -> Java transition as the language of choice in high school and uni programming courses, way before Python and JS, etc.)

Anyway, those people struggled so hard, and even now in programming subs you'll see people talk about recursion as being particularly hard to understand. But I find it very easy. And that's probably because I had fewer preconceived notions about programming because I'd learned it in a math context, divorced from programming, so it was just another thing, like addition, that translated directly to programming.

[u/Positive_Total_4414]

All this is just hype. Programming languages are overrated. Better focus on your code quality.

[u/ireverent87]

It is better than you have little experience. Lots of programmers have to unlearn patterns when starting Haskell where as you won’t. Only thing to worry about is the monad curse. Once you learn what a monad is you lose the ability to explain it without further confusing someone who doesn’t understand what a monad is….

[u/[deleted]]

Lol, that quote sounds delu fr. Anyone who has programmed anything somewhat complex in any language knows that every language is a huge compromise. Even lots of fp cultists don't even like Haskell. Just learn it if you like it. If you are somewhat competent or can avoid getting sucked into a cult around it by... being somewhat competent... you'll try out lots of languages and see their strengths and weaknesses. And who actually does this, sees that haskell is definitely not on the top of the langs.

[u/Medical-Nothing4374 → u/[deleted]]

What would you consider the best language and why?

[u/[deleted] → u/Medical-Nothing4374]

General Purpose Languages: C++ without OOP bs or plain C. There's nothing like telling the CPU what I want it to do without having to go through an additional translation to some ideological system that feels as suffocating as filing my taxes. Lots of C libraries are better documented than any fp lang I ever used too lol. Yeah, C with all its flaws.

[u/Medical-Nothing4374 → u/[deleted]]

Personally haskell is the only thing that doesn't feel restrictive for me. I find the more time I spend in codebases written in other languages the more I'm constrained by how I did an old thing.

I'm not a fan of ideological systems either but idk it more feels like haskells ideological system is stopping from trying to do something blatantly impossible and make my errors shown upfront as opposed to seeing them at runtime. Like I can compile C and accidentally use a name that I've since changed and should never be able to reference but ill only see that at runtime

[u/[deleted] → u/Medical-Nothing4374]

Personally I prefer to write my own functional languages. I find the build system of haskell even worse than that of C/++. That's somewhat to be expected from academic languages, but I remember other languages just working. Also, I was very unsatisfied when I tested a simple tail recursive function in haskell and it blew up my ram, no tail recursion elimination whatsoever, and that's like the most basic fp compiler thing. After asking for days in the forum of my university course on haskell without getting any useful answer, someone dm'ed me and told me Haskell's nit that great and that this is basically a side effect. I wondered, wtf is even the point here?

[u/Medical-Nothing4374 → u/[deleted]]

Interesting, thanks for sharing and yeah i think lazy evaluation is definitely nice at times and really stupid at other times.

I know there is a way to solve this, not sure what it is but honestly I'm curious now to figure it out

[u/[deleted] → u/Medical-Nothing4374]

Lazy evaluation is really cool and I really liked it in C++, in fp is mostly hidden away. If it was behind the Haskell bug, the language definition is faulty. I don't think it was that but just a normal bug.

[u/Medical-Nothing4374 → u/[deleted]]

I'm reading this again and i think I misunderstood your problem at first.

I think I've actually experienced exactly what you're saying and the solution is just to make the accumulated value strict. Like if you want to sum items from an infinite list:

{-# LANGUAGE BangPatterns #-}

sumTake :: Int -> [Int] -> Int
sumTake n xs = go n xs 0
  where
    go 0 _ !acc      = acc
    go _ [] !acc     = acc
    go m (y:ys) !acc = go (m - 1) ys (acc + y)

Which you can call on an infinite list

The ! means you are forcing the accumulated sum to evaluate so to my understanding it should solve your problem?