Hey everyone. Jonathan Carroll, a DataHaskell contributor, recently wrote a blog titled “Haskell IS a great language for data science” (a response to Python is not a great language for data science. I posted the article on the programming and DS subreddits and the discussion seems to be around how Haskell is inaccessible in various ways. I’m curious if there have been any initiatives to challenge this narrative recently?
Not saying more can’t be done to sell Haskell, but also..Haskell isn’t for everyone.
If all you care about is employment, it isn’t for you.
If all you care about is ecosystem size, it isn’t for you.
But it is for a lot of people, so what’s important is to have a positive voice in those threads explaining the benefits and shutting down the FUD. Not to win the argument in a reddit thread - just to be a counter-balancing voice for the lurking reader who Haskell may actually be good for if they gave it a shot!
That combined with your existing effort around data Haskell seems like a path to something good ![]()
A related anecdote of mine:
My first job out of college was at Amazon. I got invited to Seattle ahead of time to help me pick a team. Kind of an internal job fair for Amazon teams.
I remember I talked to one engineer and mentioned how I used Haskell for my senior project and really love it. She said “oh Haskell..nobody uses that for anything in real life.”
I have since made the majority of my living in the 11 years since writing Haskell. Oh, and I got paid to write pure FP in Scala using scalaz.
So I was person Haskell was for, and part of becoming a Haskeller in industry imo is stubbornly believing everyone else is wrong haha.
I think when you say something like “Haskell isn’t for everyone” you have to:
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answer who it’s for
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make sure that narrative itself isn’t exclusionary.
I remember I posted my first Haskell/Frege blog post back in 2017 and got this response on r/programming
(Ugh. Sorry to see that @mchav. Who’s laughing now, random internet commenter-or-strifebot…)
Very nice links! I for one am convinced, dataframes and :script looking good. ![]()
