The Whiteboard

This is where site scope rules get a little muddy. Both questions, from a legalistic standpoint, are the same in terms of their topicality; but one question is interesting, and the other is not.

durron597

@RobertHarvey It's interesting because this one can be edited into a form that's worth keeping, where the other cannot.

Robert Harvey

Exactly. But someone will always come along and ask the latter question, pointing to the former as evidence that theirs is on-topic.

user55340

-1

A: Is Haskell's type system an obstacle to understanding functional programming?

Babel-17 (or rather, the subset of Babel-17 if you neglect "random", "choose" and Java interop) is purely functional and dynamically typed. Check it out at http://www.babel-17.com . Disclaimer: I am not only the main dev on this project, I am the ONLY dev on this project :-)

user55340

2:41 AM

It doesn't inspire confidence.

user55340

0

A: Is Haskell's type system an obstacle to understanding functional programming?

By "pure" I assume you mean "that favors immutability". Check out Pure, Clojure and Scheme. I would think people would be attracted to Haskell because of its type system, rather than find it an obstacle. It's extremely powerful and clever people even use it to encode computations !

user55340

> If it is the latter, I'm curious what would be the most purely functional language that is dynamically typed.

user55340

This is the core of the problem with the question.

Robert Harvey

Probably Scheme.

durron597

@RobertHarvey Again, it needs to be edited to become one that does not inspire bad questions.

If I were to ask the following question:

> Which hashing algorithm is the best for uniqueness and speed? Can anyone direct me to a tutorial on hashing algorithms?

Apart from the first being a duplicate (obviously), that can still be edited into a good question, by removing the second question.

user55340

2:46 AM

> I'm studying Haskell for the purpose of understanding functional programming, with the expectation that I'll apply the insight that I gain in other languages (Groovy, Python, JavaScript mainly.)

I choose Haskell because I had the impression that it is very purely functional, and wouldn't allow for any reliance on state.

I did not choose to learn Haskell because I was interested in navigating an extremely rigid type system.

My question is this: Is a strong type system a necessary by-product of an extremely pure functional language, or is this an unrelated design choice particular to Has…

user55340

Will completely removing the last two paragraphs help clean up the question and keep it out of the poll that many of the answers seem to be targeting?

durron597

@MichaelT That would certainly help.

STCI status: learning 176 open questions / education 18 open questions

user55340

Could we get two more down votes on this answer so that I can 20k delete vote it rather than flag it?

user55340

1

A: Is Haskell's type system an obstacle to understanding functional programming?

All the languages you mentioned are dynamically typed so learning haskell is going to be pretty tough if haskell is your first exposure to static typing and functional programming in general. You're probably better off starting with Erlang which is a functional language but doesn't have the same ...

durron597

3:25 AM

@MichaelT What do you need it to, -1?

user55340

@durron597 Yep.

durron597

@MichaelT Gah, you didn't take out the learning

user55340

And got it. Even if a mod acts to clean them up... its nice to have a vote from the community on it.

user55340

@durron597 oops. Gone now.

durron597

@MichaelT Is this question worth saving?

user55340

3:31 AM

@durron597 I'd lean to "no" - the site doesn't even exist anymore.

user55340

Much of the question is in the questions that are on the site and implies one looks at them and understands it.

user55340

> I'm teaching some middle and high school students programming right now, and I found that some of them really liked online programming puzzles. So I created kapparate.com/coder , and right now there's 4 categories of puzzles.

durron597

@MichaelT I agree, of course, I'm thinking about philip's answer.

user55340

He has good material on there, but parts of it are very hard to understand without the site as its a critique of the site itself.

durron597

Plus, the question is about actually writing good code, not about "help me read a programming book" type of crap that education usually is

user55340

3:33 AM

> You could mix your code and English a little better. It's one of those hassles that StackExchange has tackled pretty well. You could develop a system like here and highlight any text which is to be taken as code. Also, use a different color for mathematics, because = means different things if the context is mathematics or C.

durron597

@MichaelT Agreed

2

Q: We're Spiralling out of control, Doctor!

The Doctor, in trying to escape from the Dalek forces has decided to send them in a spin by traveling in various pockets of space in a spiral motion. Depending on the nature of the available space-time, The Doctor needs to enter into the TARDIS controls the height and width of the section of spa...

code-golf

user55340

@durron597 ... must fix hand drawn diagrams...

Robert Harvey

Epic Meal Time is fun to watch, but I get chest pains just looking at their food.

durron597

@RobertHarvey Just saw this for the first time. Nice comments.

Robert Harvey

@durron597 Ah, yeah, I remember that one. Mike S couldn't fscking wait until I was done summarizing.

durron597

3:48 AM

@RobertHarvey lol yea

Robert Harvey

All the downvoters were reading was the title. And really, that's all they needed to read.

"I shall summarize this enormous tome for you in the comments, so you don't have to read it from cover to cover. You're welcome."

durron597

Ironically, it never got closed as duplicate.

Robert Harvey

I've got a great idea, and nobody's thought of it yet!

user15026

I like how he is convinced his question is new and different, when it really wasn't at all.

Duga

8:55 AM

Git (And your question is off-topic and belongs to Programmers, and is there possibly a duplicate) — idmean 39 secs ago

@idmean this question is a very poor fit for Programmers - it would be quickly voted down and closed over there, see meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/… Recommended reading: What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow — gnat 34 secs ago

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