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Re:A technical vision for the Haskell ecosystem by raddan on Friday November 13, 2026 @01:40PM (#50487868)
I've loved this video for years, primarily because of SPJ's willingness (and excitement, even) to talk about Haskell's shortcomings. I think SPJ and other important people in the Haskell community are keenly aware that Haskell appeals to a specific demographic and that, to survive as more than just a research plaything, that they need to broaden participation.

The famously friendly "Learn You a Haskell" book features its first "helloworld" program deep into the middle of the book, _after_ functors and (if I recall correctly) monads. It takes a very special beginner programmer to push that far through, working in the REPL, before they can write programs that do basic I/O.

I teach functional programming to college sophomores and juniors, and I would love to teach them Haskell. But I have to meet them where they are, and it would be difficult to do in Haskell. This is why we have taught either F#, Scala, or LISP over the years. F# in particular has a lot of the aesthetic qualities of Haskell while allowing impurity or mutability escape hatches without too much trouble. If somebody has truly beginner-friendly Haskell resources, I would love to hear about it-- I'm apparently not smart enough to chart that path myself.

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