Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I would recommend Haskell over Lisp, because Haskell will force you to do functional programming, where-as Lisp is less rigid in that regard. In addition the #haskell IRC channel on FreeNode is filled with people who have infinite patience with Haskell newbies and it has an excellent introductory text at http://learnyouahaskell.com/

About two years ago I decided to learn Haskell. Had about 4 false starts and didn't "get" it until my 5th attempt, at which point I figured out what the type system meant and had a bit of a Matrix "I know kung fu!"-moment. Two years of hanging around in #haskell later, I know a billion more things about programming/programming languages and learned type theory (although I still don't grok all conversations there :p).

Some other comments on the usefulness of Haskell:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145743

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145743



You may also have luck learning FP with Erlang. It's also functional, but approaches it from a different direction, focusing on reliability and concurrency rather than types and purity. Between Haskell and Erlang, one of them will probably fit your mind better.

I started FP with OCaml, but OCaml makes it too easy to continue writing imperative code when you're actively trying to learn new idioms.


I agree Erlang is also very interesting. I think some of the features looks absolutely fascinating (hot updatable code!), etc. I just haven't found the the time to learn it yet.

I wish Erlang's syntax was more like Haskell, though :\


Your two links are identical..


My bad the other one was supposed to be http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322920

Bit of a copy and paste fail...




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: