
Haskell Researchers Announce Discovery of Industry Programmer Who Gives a Shit - pchristensen
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html
======
jmillikin
140 points? Really?

I know it's fashionable in these parts to make fun of Haskell, but it's just
not _funny_ unless the writer knows something about the language. Would you
upvote these articles?

* Why C++ is More Object-Oriented Than Smalltalk

* Stupid Ivory-Tower Academics Claim "Perl Is Too Slow for Weather Simulation"

* LISP: It Would Be a Lot More Useful Without All the Parentheses

It's especially galling considering pg's various articles on language
expressiveness; remember this quote, folks?

"""As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power
continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are
obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to.
But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the
power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely
weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub,
but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for
him, because he thinks in Blub."""

When somebody tosses around phrases like _how to subvert Haskell's type system
to accomplish basic shit you can do in other languages_ , it's a big red flag
that they've never used Haskell, and possibly have never even seen Haskell
code.

~~~
raganwald
I think it's great that you've tried to provide a review criticizing this
post. But please resist the urge to tell me what I ought to find funny, just
as I have resisted the urge to tell you what you ought to find interesting.

Especially resist the urge to criticize others for liking things you find
unworthy. Your comment's criticism of the OP is appreciated. Your comment's
criticism of other members for voting for the post is, well, something else
entirely.

~~~
jmillikin
Surely there are better places to post funny but thought-free links than
Hacker News?

~~~
raganwald
Privately, I agree with you and I haven't upvoted it. After that, I suggest
that our options are to (1) Flag it if it's really off topic, and/or (2)
Criticize it, which I think you've done well. My only concern is whether we
should (3) be galled or outraged that others have their own idea of what ought
to be #1 on HN.

I like humour, and it seems like we share a personal preference for the kind
that makes you laugh and then think hard when you realize that there's
something incredibly insightful at the heart of the joke.

Alas, I'm not skilled enough to pull that off myself. All I can say about
Haskell is to quote Alan Perlis: _A language that does not change the way you
think about programming is not worth learning_. And given that, the sad
observation that most "Industry Types" as stereotyped in the OP are not
interested in changing the way they think about anything.

It's more than a Blub thing, it's a comfort zone thing.

~~~
bpyne
I think comfort zone plays a part in IT developers seeming uninterested in
"new" ideas. Closer to the heart of the problem IMO is that most business
applications are just not very interesting. You can reduce them to: take input
values from screen, run SQL query, and post query results back to the screen.
Writing good SQL is the most challenging part.

In order for apps to be more interesting - making new ideas in IT appealing -
businesses must be willing to re-examine their processes and change them with
an eye towards better automation and some business intelligence. However,
getting a single department in a business to change its processes is as
monumental as changing global warming.

Of course, another issue altogether is COTS reducing the applications actually
written in-house. Making intellectual investments in powerful programming
languages is just not sound when a developer is simply writing "glue" code
between vendor systems.

People do generally get jazzed up in IT departments when new technologies come
around. Sure, there are technological curmudgeons, but very few. Enthusiasm
gets dampened when it is clear that a good business case cannot be made for
the new technology.

(I used "new" relative to an IT department's current environment and not in
reference to age of the technology.)

------
davidmathers
"Avoid success at all costs."

 _I mentioned this at a talk I gave about Haskell a few years back and it’s
become quite widely quoted. When a language becomes too well known, or too
widely used and too successful suddenly you can’t change anything anymore. You
get caught and spend ages talking about things that have nothing to do with
the research side of things. Success is great, but it comes at a price._ \--
Simon Peyton Jones

------
j_baker
"We crafted a fake satirical post lampooning Haskell as an unusable, overly
complex turd -- a writing task that was emotionally difficult but conceptually
trivial." - This is pure gold.

~~~
gvb
On the "truth is stranger than fiction" front, I got a good chuckle from the
monads-in-Perl link <http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=620692>:

"Anyway, I think it would be worth doing, if it could be expressed readably,
but I was not able to figure out a way to do that."

There is some deep irony in monads in Perl not being readable enough for
_Perl._

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Actually, the "modern Perl" people are promoting a Perl style where your
program contains more letters than special characters. They seem quite
influential.

------
JonnieCache
If you don't find this funny, then you really need to examine your sense of
humour, because this is not about making fun of haskell. It's barely about
haskell at all. It is fantastically well constructed exercise in comic
writing.

Stop thinking about the programming language wars for one minute and reread
the text again, and look at the multileveled semantic games the author is
playing. I thought most here were good at that?

Doug Hofstadter would be proud.

------
angusgr
I chuckled, and I'm happy Steve Yegge might blog some more, but this feels a
bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

~~~
joshes
If only because you could fit all of the Haskell programmers into a barrel of
standard size? I think that's the point of the article, actually.

~~~
angusgr
More because it's easy to poke fun at Haskell in this way, even the Haskell
people know they come off as obtuse and academic. AFAIK there's been much
soul-searching in their community about how to get past that.

While Steve Yegge is a good satirist, I see this post as an extended version
of this joke from the "Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages":

 _Haskell gets some resistance due to the complexity of using monads to
control side effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a
monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"_

~~~
jfb
I love that joke, because I barely understand it, but minimal understanding
just makes it funnier.

------
mixmax
If Douglas Adams were to write about programming this is how he would do it.

That's a compliment.

~~~
yters
Or the Onion. Not as much of a compliment...

~~~
snth
I agree that this seems to be exactly in the style of an Onion article;
however, I think The Onion has put out some hilarious stuff. For example:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-
doing-...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-
blades,11056/)

------
nickik
"I believe the root cause of the popularity problem is Haskell's lack of
reasonable support for mutually recursive generic container types." \-- Super
funny!

~~~
j_baker
"If we can create a monadic composition-functor wrapper that is perceived as
sufficiently sexy by hardened industry veterans, then I think we will see an
uptick in giving a shit, possibly as much as a full extra person."

------
yters
She explained the trap they set for Briars: "We crafted a fake satirical post
lampooning Haskell as an unusable, overly complex turd -- a writing task that
was emotionally difficult but conceptually trivial. Then we laced the post
with deeper social subtext decrying the endemic superficiality and laziness of
global industry programming culture, to make ourselves feel better. Finally,
each of us upvoted the post, which was unexpectedly contentious because nobody
could agree on what the [HN] voting arrows actually mean."

Apparently their approach was more successful than they thought.

------
tumult
GHC Haskell actually supports mutually recursive generic container types, but
you must enable type class system extensions which make type checking
undecidable.

------
brian6
This successfully trolled me, because I think Haskell is really good stuff
made by really smart and cool people. Surely there was a better target for
satire.

I'm an industry programmer (in C). I also have a bunch of packages on Hackage.

~~~
wtracy
Are you sure it's not making fun of the people who _don't_ use Haskell?

------
presidentender
Will there every be a satirical Steve Yegge post on HN that spawns any
discussion other than quotes from the article itself?

~~~
derefr
That's what makes Yegge posts so long, I think: he thinks of everything people
could say in response to his original "core" post, and then includes it in the
post itself.

------
csantini
"Finding a person who gives a shit about Haskell is an inherently NP-complete
computer science problem. It's similar in scope and complexity to the problem
of trying to find a tenured academic who didn't have the bulk of his or her
work done by uncredited graduate students."

~~~
prosa
Surely you could implement this search in at least O(n) time?

~~~
eru
At least is easy. At most is hard.

~~~
wahnfrieden
"At least, if not better." The context disambiguates the direction of
magnitude.

------
natmaster
Facebook uses haskell.

<https://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php> (They only accept answers in
languages they actually use.)

------
edw519
This was actually a personally test disguised as a blog post. See how you
scored:

If you didn't understand it: You're not a hacker and never will be; go get
your MBA.

If it upset you: You are a hacker without a sense of humor. You belong in a
room without other people. Fed Ex will deliver your circuit boards tomorrow.

If you laughed once: You are an aspiring junior programmer. Keep on working
hard and best wishes to you.

If you laughed more than once: You are a seasoned hacker. Nice to see you
here.

If you sprayed Mountain Dew on your keyboard: You have that rare combination
of understanding both bits and people. You must do great work.

If you are cutting and pasting these gems for your bulletin board: You and I
must be kindred spirits. Email me. Let's do a start-up together.

~~~
Alternatively
If you write a post attempting to categorize everyone's sociability and
competence based on how close their reactions are to yours: You are edw519

------
rapind
Loved the article, but someone please explain "faster than a teabagger with a
grade-school arithmetic book". I'm pretty sure I got all the others.

~~~
gvb
_...their Giving a Shit gene shuts down faster than a teabagger with a grade-
school arithmetic book._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement#Use_of_term_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement#Use_of_term_.22teabagger.22)

The implication is that TEA party constituents have no interest in actually
understanding the grade-school math necessary to understand a budget.

~~~
rapind
Thank you very much (Canuck here so I don't usually get the political
references).

------
stylejam
Honestly I think this is my personal funniest post of 2010. And no, it's not
making fun of Haskell.

------
mkramlich
my new favorite Yegge post. very funny. and so true. :)

------
alphaoverlord
Sniff sniff. Whats that smell? O right, Onion worthy.

------
codexon
<Insert Dons and the usual angry Haskell fanboy diatribes here> </satire>

~~~
dons
Diatribes?

~~~
codexon
Stop pretending Dons. It is quite amusing that you are voted up 5 times for
such a content-less comment yet you and your associates are powerless to
downvote the article.

~~~
dons
I'll have my associates look into this matter.

~~~
mwotton
there is no cabal

