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Ask HN: Career opportunities with Haskell?

15 points by sz ↗ HN
I've fallen in love with this language and writing in anything else just doesn't feel right.

How valued are Haskell programmers in the "real world"? How do you think this will change?

13 comments

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keefe
come on now, have you ever fallen in love with a phillips head screwdriver?
kevbin 

  module Comment where

  import Control.Exception (assert)

  class Loveable thing where
    loves :: Person -> thing -> Bool

  instance Loveable ScrewDriver where
    _ `loves` PhillipsHead = False

  instance Loveable ProgrammingLanguage where
    Me `loves` Haskell = True
    TheOtherGuy `loves` Haskell = True
    _ `loves` _ = False

  data ScrewDriver = FlatHead | PhillipsHead | Torx
  data ProgrammingLanguage = Haskell | Lisp | Scheme 
  data Person = You | Me | TheOtherGuy

  implies a b = if a then assert True b else assert True True

  argument person = (not (person `loves` PhillipsHead)) `implies` (not (person `loves` Haskell))

  check a = mapM (print . a) [You, Me, TheOtherGuy]

 Comment> check argument
 True
 False
 False
chc
Probably not. But many photographers have fallen in love with certain kinds of cameras or techniques or development methodologies. And many musicians have fallen in love with particular kinds of instrument or playing styles. And I know gearheads who will go on for hours about the virtues of Obscure Mechanical Thing A versus Obscure Mechanical Thing B.

But no, programming languages must be like screwdrivers. You just mindlessly turn them clockwise all day and you've created Google. Right?

keefe
Was falling in love with those particular tools optimal for the photographer, musician, gearhead? Could they have made more money, created more if they had broadened their horizons?

It all depends on if the goal is to make as much money as fast as possible or to have fun and satisfy yourself intellectually.

There's nothing wrong with loving programming language X, but I wouldn't make career or project decisions based on enjoying the syntax of one vs the other.

imho the difficult part is figuring out the logic of the program, determining which libraries to commit to, writing any novel algorithms and engineering the system so it runs efficiently and doesn't fall over.

sz
I'm a musician and I can tell you from experience that I sound a lot better on a Steinway concert grand than on a cheap Casio keyboard. So, more money? I guess the keyboard is cheaper, but when the musician is happy the music is better.
keefe
better tools certainly make for a better product, no question. I think this stretches the analogy a little bit though, if we're comparing java and haskell I don't think we can compare a steinway and a casio, maybe a steinway and some off brand.
prodigal_erik
If I were uncommonly proficient with a nailgun, I would want to know which homebuilders would let me use it rather than the industry standard rock-onna-stick. You don't have to love a good tool to think inferior tools suck.
Tim_M
Haskell is such a great language and it's a real shame that not many companies see it's advantages. There was recently a discussion on haskell-cafe[1] about it's lack of adoption in industries other than finance.

Haskell is perfectly suited for critical systems: I've seen job postings for C++ programmers for air traffic control systems which I think could really do with haskell's type safety.

In recent years however haskell performance and library availability has made it suitable for general high level programming like web development for example[2][3].

[1]http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/78651

[2]http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Web

[3]http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Applications_and_libraries/We...

trimber
For anyone looking for a Haskell job, this was recently submitted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608147 I'm also under the impression that functional languages are just generally used more extensively in the financial(high frequency trading for example) sector than in other areas.