From OO Java to FP Haskell

[Marouane Trabelsi]

Hi Vitaly,

From eyes of an expert, I would like to know how would Haskell compare to other pure FP programming languages? What make it so appealing for FP enthusiast?
And would it be a recommended language to step in for non-FP intermediate / expert developers?

[Vitaly Bragilevsky]

Hi Marouane,

That's a very controversial issue! I personally think that Haskell's purity and type system makes it unique in the area of FP-languages usable in production. Learning it can provide many insights for non-FP programmers because all the functional features are distilled. But in fact, I don't want to be a person who insists on sticking with one choice. I see benefits in learning other languages (e.g. Clojure) too. I only think that mixed-style languages (mainly Scala) do a bad job of explaining ideas in FP.

[Marouane Trabelsi]

Thanks for the insights Vitaly.

I am pretty convinced that this is a controversial issue and may lead to large debates even.

As with any other programming language, once we get from basic stuff to advanced and large apps, the community shows to be of valuable help. How would you describe the Haskell community?

[Vitaly Bragilevsky]

Marouane Trabelsi wrote:As with any other programming language, once we get from basic stuff to advanced and large apps, the community shows to be of valuable help. How would you describe the Haskell community?

It would be unfair to say that there are no problems. But we are getting better and better, that's for sure!

[Marouane Trabelsi]

This would be very encouraging to jump into the Haskell world.