HACKER Q&A
📣 dhkts1

Is Haskell Worth Learning?


Is Haskell Worth Learning?


  👤 yesenadam Accepted Answer ✓
I'd say it depends on which languages you already know/have been exposed to.

After downloading some software written in Haskell this week, I installed GHC and got some books on Haskell. Got sick of constantly hearing about how cool it is! After reading a few dozen pages, I thought it looked a lot like (Standard) ML, which I got into a couple of years ago. So I googled differences between Haskell and ML, and they indeed sound not-so-very-different. So I gave up on that idea for now. I was after a language very different from any I knew before. Maybe next year. (In recent years have gotten into Lisp, Prolog, Forth, ML, Tcl etc - each totally different from each other and from languages I knew before.)

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. - Alan Perliss


👤 nnoitra
Absolutely yes, if you have only been working with langs such as C, Java, Javascript etc. Basically it will fundamentally shift your thinking.

Honestly though, I prefer ocaml much more than haskell because it has a cleaner syntax.


👤 TXV
If you were never exposed to functional programming before, learning Haskell will give you a whole new perspective on how you write code, and I bet it will make you a better programmer just because of that.

With that said, in Europe I ever came across exactly zero job ads that require Haskell, and exactly one in Singapore. In North America / Bay Area it might be more common though.


👤 PaulHoule
Depends on your goals. Really I think Prolog, Constraint Handling Rules and similar systems are more interesting.

👤 diehunde
If it's only for fun sure. Otherwise no.

👤 quda
No. Try Elixir. Much more useful in the real world.

👤 bjourne
It depends.

👤 MarsTeam
Yes