Within a reason of course, but one of the pleasures of Haskell is how much trust you begin to put in the compiler at some point. Use of haskell programming language code#It will seem slow and frustrating.īut this effort will quickly pay off, because the type system is so powerful, that if your code actually compiles, it means that it probably works. At the beginning you will find yourself spending more time writing type definitions than the code itself. For a beginners this is often the thing that scares them away from Haskell. You will get a better handle on programming with typesĪs I mentioned, Haskell's type system is simply incredible. So with the introduction out of the way, let's finally find out why would it be worth learning this bizarre language:ġ. In fact, it's precisely those concepts that will make you a better programmer even when you use a more traditional programming language! And that's okay! Part of the fun of Haskell is learning the concepts that I have listed. If you have never programmed in a language like Haskell, many of those adjectives might still sound very alien to you. This results in some interesting properties - for example simply by looking on a type signature of a function you can tell if this function performs some side effects! Hell, you can't even change a content of a variable! All actions like these - called side effects - are carefully encapsulated in Haskell. This means that in Haskell you can't just print a thing to a console or make a HTTP request. Use of haskell programming language free#Side-effects free - Now this is a bit of a lie but, at least conceptually, Haskell is side-effects free. After learning Haskell, every other type system, like the ones in Java or TypeScript, will seem ugly and clunky to you! Strictly typed - There is actually a lot of functional programming languages out there, but Haskell differs from them with its incredible type system. This results in some mind-bending properties, like, for example, creating lists of. Haskell is "lazy", which means that it will compute it's values only when absolutely necessary. Lazily evaluated - In Haskell, defining a value doesn't actually mean it will be created in memory. All it's data structures are immutable by default and it supports many functional programming patterns out of the box, most notably currying. If you like functional programming, you will feel at home while learning Haskell. It's actually kind of a difficult thing to do, because Haskell has multitude of characteristics that make it different from your typical programming language.įunctional and immutable - this is probably the least alien thing for a modern developer. Now, before we really begin, I should probably explain at least in few sentences what Haskell is and what makes it so different. In this article I will try to describe those benefits, so that you can be sure that time invested in learning Haskell will be well worth it. But I do believe that there are actual, very practical benefits of learning that language. For practical purposes I believe it is still a bit to alien and restrictive. I don't believe that after learning Haskell you will want to use it in your daily work. Especially if he/she wants to seriously get into functional programming (but as we will see, object-oriented programmers will also gain a lot from learning that language!). That's why I believe learning Haskell should be a top priority for a programmer who wants to push himself and gain new knowledge and expertise. The thing is, most of the popular languages nowadays really differ only in details, like some syntax or special features, but not in the general approach. This effect however diminishes if you learn only programming languages that closely resemble the language you already know well. But I do agree that learning a new language can bring a tremendous benefits to your programming knowledge and style. I don't necessarily agree with that (after all, there are more important things to do in life than just code all the time). I have read once that a "real" programmer should learn at least one new language every year.
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