Heh, I just found a few nice quotes from the Haskell weekly news:

"Any sufficiently misguided opinion is indistinguishable from deep insight."

"One does not simply >>= into Mordor."

"I was TA for a C++ programming course aimed at 1st year physics once. 
Some girl asked for help. 'I wrote pseudo-code but I cannot translate it 
to C++'. Her pseudo-code was valid Haskell. I cried."

"I swear that most of higher-dimensional category theory must have been 
arrived at by some guys sitting around in a room with a blackboard and 
saying "What if a drew a diagram like *THIS*!?" and drawing some insane 
scribble up on the blackboard, and then everyone tries to figure out how 
to turn it into meaningful mathematics."

"If you read a haskell book or an FP book, by chapter 5 it's already 
doing data structures. It's chapter 10 in imperative books."

"I'm on a rollomorphism."

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 12/05/09 13:00, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> "I was TA for a C++ programming course aimed at 1st year physics once.
> Some girl asked for help. 'I wrote pseudo-code but I cannot translate it
> to C++'. Her pseudo-code was valid Haskell. I cried."

	Stolen for my taglines file - thanks!

> "If you read a haskell book or an FP book, by chapter 5 it's already
> doing data structures. It's chapter 10 in imperative books."

	I'm sure SICP gets there quicker. The whole book is only 5 chapters.

-- 
BREAKFAST.COM Halted... Cereal Port Not Responding.

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> "I was TA for a C++ programming course aimed at 1st year physics once. 
> Some girl asked for help. 'I wrote pseudo-code but I cannot translate it 
> to C++'. Her pseudo-code was valid Haskell. I cried."

  I would be really surprised if that was a real story.

> "If you read a haskell book or an FP book, by chapter 5 it's already 
> doing data structures. It's chapter 10 in imperative books."

  It depends on the book, really.

  If I were to write a book on C++, I would start with object-oriented
programming concepts and the first C++ keyword which would appear in the
entire book would be "class".

  (I really think that books which start with "main()" or a "hello world"
program are starting from the wrong end of the spectrum.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> "I was TA for a C++ programming course aimed at 1st year physics once. 
>> Some girl asked for help. 'I wrote pseudo-code but I cannot translate it 
>> to C++'. Her pseudo-code was valid Haskell. I cried."
> 
>   I would be really surprised if that was a real story.

Yeah, I would imagine it's more like "it was _almost_ valid Haskell".

Unless this girl happened to be an actual Haskell programmer in the 
first place, of course... Otherwise it's unlikely it would be exactly 
runnable. But I guess it might be close if you're used to the 
mathematician's way to explaining things.

>> "If you read a haskell book or an FP book, by chapter 5 it's already 
>> doing data structures. It's chapter 10 in imperative books."
> 
>   It depends on the book, really.

Well, this is true. Of course it's a blanket generalisation.

>   If I were to write a book on C++, I would start with object-oriented
> programming concepts and the first C++ keyword which would appear in the
> entire book would be "class".
> 
>   (I really think that books which start with "main()" or a "hello world"
> program are starting from the wrong end of the spectrum.)

I guess having Hello World means you've got something you can actually 
compile and run, and thereby check that your C++ compiler is set up 
right and you know how to work it... But yes, for learning the language, 
it's probably not the best place to start. But if you want a *runnable* 
C++ program, you need to know about main() and so forth.

(Haskell has the advantage here that you can run code snippets in an 
interpretter before you've learned how to make a "runnable program". 
Haskell books usually have Hello World near the back. Then again, maybe 
somebody somewhere has a C++ interpretter, or at least some C++ 
boilerplate for running small example fragments?)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Then again, maybe 
> somebody somewhere has a C++ interpretter

  Making a full-fledged C++ interpreter would be an enormous job. (OTOH an
interpreter would probably make some things easier, such as implementing
export templates.)

  I think there exist full-fledged C interpreters, though.

>, or at least some C++ 
> boilerplate for running small example fragments?)

  You write the C++ program using a C++ IDE and run it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Am Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:29:55 -0500 schrieb Warp:

> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Then again, maybe
>> somebody somewhere has a C++ interpretter
> 
>   Making a full-fledged C++ interpreter would be an enormous job. (OTOH
>   an
> interpreter would probably make some things easier, such as implementing
> export templates.)
> 

Don't know, how complete it is (they write themself, that it is not 
complete), but CINT of the ROOT framework at CERN comes to mind:

http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/cint

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Warp wrote:
>   I think there exist full-fledged C interpreters, though.

Yep. I used them back when 512K of RAM was a lot of memory and linking took 
your lunchtime.

It was very handy to relink the interpreter with the libraries you had 
working and then work on the next level of your abstraction on top of that. 
(E.g., link the interpreter with your curses-like library while writing form 
handling, relink with form handling while writing the calculations you were 
configuring via the forms, etc.)

Nowadays we do things more powerful than C as interpreters and just throw 
shovels full of CPU cycles at them. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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"analogies are endofunctors in the category of bad explanations"

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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