"Haskell is a valuable language for a lot of different reasons, but the most important one is that it changes the way that you think about programming. Haskell does things in a very different way from the imperative languages that most of us are familiar with. And it's an extremely well-designed language, so there isn't a ton of crap standing between you and the concepts that you can learn from it."
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Member since:2006-07-28
But I see no point in referential transparency. It only hinders my productivity instead of helping it. I think referential transparency is unnecessary, and I have not read a single compelling argument about it, other than it generally helps.
You're not alone. There's a guy that has been recently been making the same case on comp.lang.functional. No one ever accuses me of being a purist, so I'll reserve judgement.
Member since:2006-03-20
You're not alone. There's a guy that has been recently been making the same case on comp.lang.functional. No one ever accuses me of being a purist, so I'll reserve judgement.
Do you mean this?
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.functional/browse_frm/thre...
My view is different from the one in the above thread.
I understand that assignment of any variable from a function breaks referential transparency.
What I am claiming is that if we restrict assignment to local variables, referential transparency is maintained.
Member since:
2006-03-20
There's no point in learning Haskell if you're not into it - minimal employment potential etc. - but don't think it's a waste of time because you can more conveniently just do the functional thing with Ruby or something. Haskell usually takes some time to soak in, because it's quite different. I have given up on it a couple times because of various impracticalities, but have been sucked back in because really nothing compares.
Actually I have picked it up quite fast...I knew ML, so it was quite easy. You see, Haskell is not all that different from other languages...once you know a few, you can easily learn more.
But I see no point in referential transparency. It only hinders my productivity instead of helping it. I think referential transparency is unnecessary, and I have not read a single compelling argument about it, other than it generally helps.
Of course all the gurus will now try to prove me wrong...