Haskell??

What is your take on Haskell? I want some opinions on the language. It looks interesting and I am thinking of learning it.

Do you already know a functional language?

Yes: I shouldn't bother unless you like the look of it better than what you know. It is a nice language, but isn't really "better" than many flavors of LISP, F#, or the like to my mind.

No: Learning a new language almost certainly can't hurt. I like Scheme more than Haskell. This is purely a preference thing. A lot of functional languages are strangely similar when you get past the look of them. You might want to look around for a while and find one that makes you go "Nice.".

Soma

Do you already know a functional language?

No, I do not. That's exactly why I wanted to learn one.

Never heard of F# or scheme. I have looked into ruby and really like that language as well. Has a great feel and I love the look, especially the power it has! Though I am not sure if that is considered a functional language.

From Functional programming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Other functional programming languages that have seen use in industry include Scala,[50] F#,[15][16] Lisp,[51] Standard ML,[52][53] and Clojure.[54]

Listed before that I saw in a quick scan was:
Erlang
Scheme dialect of Lisp
OCaml
Haskell

Tim S.

Whatever you do, if you want to learn functional programming, stay away from ML.

Thanks @Stahta for the link.

@Neo1, any reason you suggest I stay away from ML?

Originally Posted by Annonymous

Thanks @Stahta for the link.

@Neo1, any reason you suggest I stay away from ML?

Well, i learned functional programming through a course at my university, where we were taught ML. Even though learning ML covered some of the biggest features of functional programming, such as higher-order functions and type inference, ML itself contains things such as pointers and loops which are inherently imperative language features. It is, in essence, a bastard child.

You can learn functional programming with ML, but i suggest you pick a purely functional language. Besides, ML is old, really old, and it lacks a lot of features that the newer languages have.

If you ever find yourself in need of an ML interpreter though, i would suggest Moscow ML. The documentation is simple and easy to follow, and i find it's alot easier to work with than Standard ML of New Jersey.