[jon.kiparsky]

Actually, I haven't tried Haskell yet. Mostly because of the people who use it...

[mostyfriedman]

jon.kiparsky, on 04 November 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Actually, I haven't tried Haskell yet. Mostly because of the people who use it...

Then you're missing out a whole lot. The Haskell community is very friendly and very helpful btw, and my comment was a joke, that's why I included a smiley.

[SuperLlama]

"smug functional programmer"

[carnivroar]

I don't know anything about Haskell but learning Scheme made me finally understand recursion.

[mostyfriedman]

Actually learning a lisp or another functional language before Haskell is a good idea.

[Nitewalkr]

Although Python would be the first choice; As long as you know what you are doing, you can work with any coding language for maths.

[jon.kiparsky]

mostyfriedman, on 04 November 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

jon.kiparsky, on 04 November 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Actually, I haven't tried Haskell yet. Mostly because of the people who use it...

Then you're missing out a whole lot. The Haskell community is very friendly and very helpful btw, and my comment was a joke, that's why I included a smiley.

Did you include a smiley? I didn't see it. The animated flashing ones annoy me, so I adblock the bunch of them. (For what it's worth, I also don't see avatars and signatures, because I don't like the visual noise.) I did figure that it was a joke, though, at least halfway, but it was a joke that reflected the reality of the Haskell community as the rest of us experience it - so it was at most half a joke.
And in that spirit, my comment was half a joke, half serious as well. The smug Haskell coder actually is a cliche, and in that sense I was playing along with your joke. But that cliche exists because that smug Haskell programmer is really the only person out there talking about the language, and in that sense I was serious: the people who advocate for the language seem to be doing their best to convince me that the only real use for Haskell is to make Haskell programmers feel superior to others. Seeing no practical use cases for the language, I have not added it to my list of things to learn, and until I see a reason to, I'm not likely to spend the time required to learn it.

[mostyfriedman]

Some languages are worth learning even if you don't think you'll ever make a living off of them. An example would be assembly, it teaches you to think in different terms, and it shows you what goes on beneath the surface. Same goes with Haskell, it teaches one to think differently, and get exposed to a lot of new concepts. Just my opinion.