
Paul Hudak, co-creator of Haskell, has died - bigfishprod
https://messages.yale.edu/messages/University/univmsgs/detail/121669
======
ColinWright
Deeply moving article[0] submitted a few days ago[1] when it became clear that
he was in his last days. My condolences to all those who knew him.

[0]
[http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/hudak/journal/view/id/5538...](http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/hudak/journal/view/id/5538f5cea589b4216c04438a)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431017)

------
jollari
I've met and knew Paul for a time while I was in high school. Despite my
interest then with CS, at that time, I had no idea until now that he was the
inventor of Haskell or was involved in Computer Science at all.

Independent to his contributions to the industry that I now love; I knew him
as an extremely friendly and energetic person. He was well liked by all who
came in contact with him and his absence will be wide felt.

~~~
talander
Fellow Hamden High grad?

~~~
jollari
Go Green Dragons

------
eblume
I just restarted my investigation of Haskell yesterday. This is very sad news.
Haskell is a beautiful language, and while I still struggle to write even
basic programs in it I can tell that every time I solve an issue I'm having I
am becoming a smarter programmer.

He will be missed!

~~~
coolsunglasses
I teach Haskell and I'm working on a book
[http://haskellbook.com/](http://haskellbook.com/) with my coauthor. We've
been testing with reviewers and it's been going pretty well. We've even been
testing with my coauthor's 10 year old
[https://twitter.com/argumatronic/status/593845481140133888](https://twitter.com/argumatronic/status/593845481140133888)
:)

My guide for learning Haskell is here:
[https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell](https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell)

You can get help in the IRC channel if you'd like as well. I don't recommend
using LearnYouAHaskell.

I feel a bit bad as Hudak's books were the only ones I hadn't checked out
before starting on my book. Rectifying that soon.

~~~
QuercusMax
Can you explain why you don't recommend LearnYouAHaskell? I'm genuinely
curious.

~~~
killtheliterate
He explains in [http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-12-31-functional-
education.h...](http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-12-31-functional-
education.html)

~~~
bbcbasic
I am following that guide to get me started. Taking the recommended courses, I
finished the cis194 Spring 2013 course and I am getting through the NICTA
course, with help from #Haskell on freenode IRC.

Based on my experience the recommendations are good, but when working on
material like this on your own it is a slog because both of these courses are
designed to be taught live. So beware. However they are probably the best
courses available online. It seems someone (maybe me someday!) needs to do an
equivalent of "RailsCasts" for Haskell to make this more accessible.

The NICTA course contains hard exercises building various functors, including
transformers. It's a mind bender and oddly I had code that worked because the
types matched up but I had no intuition as to why it actually worked! But it
does raise your game to a new level.

~~~
coolsunglasses
>but when working on material like this on your own it is a slog because both
of these courses are designed to be taught live. So beware. However they are
probably the best courses available online.

Definitely, this is why we're working on a book. We acknowledge cis194 and
NICTA course are difficult and designed to be done as part of a class. That's
also why we suggest Thompson's book as a fallback.

There isn't a book designed for an independent reader that we're happy with at
present.

>The NICTA course contains hard exercises building various functors, including
transformers

These things must be covered if you want to use Haskell in anger. One thing I
would change in NICTA course if given the option is to make the transformers
tutorial have a smoother ramp. State/StateT could be built up to via
Writer/Reader and the transformer versions thereof.

That the NICTA course confronts these (Functor, Applicative, Monad, Monad
transformers) and is rigorous in covering the basics along with those topics
is what makes it so valuable. Most other materials either don't cover them or
don't provide proper exercises.

"Show & Tell" is _not_ good enough for getting people comfortable with these
tools and sadly that's the mistake a lot of resources for Haskell make. You
have to make exercises that make learners manipulate and see the structure of
how these things work.

~~~
bbcbasic
Good answers. To be clear I am not complaining. Actually I love it. I love
struggling through it and the feeling of triumph when solving those problems.

I think the difficulty is a rite of passage to become a functional programmer,
however smoother ramps would help, and I am sure your book will be a great
help and is much needed.

~~~
coolsunglasses
>To be clear I am not complaining.

Oh sure, I didn't figure you were. I just wanted (other) people to understand
that, yes, we're aware of the friction and difficulties and that we're working
on it.

>I think the difficulty is a rite of passage to become a functional programmer

Hum. There's some place and purpose for this, such as with professional fields
like law and medicine. I'm not sure add'l difficulty beyond what is essential
to understanding the material is valuable except as a historic social "glue"
for embattled/relatively small programming language communities like Haskell
and ML.

>I am sure your book will be a great help and is much needed.

We hope so and believe it'll be an improvement. We've been testing the
material pretty aggressively with people completely new to programming. We're
going to start testing with people that already code but don't know FP soon.

If the book sells well enough, we've got follow-up books in mind (4+ in the
queue).

------
jgrahamc

        Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. 
        The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, 
        and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

~~~
malandrew
You're comment made me think of something else I read from time to time that
resonates with me when someone passes away, especially if that person has
contributed greatly like Paul has:

    
    
        No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
        is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
        if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
        is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
        well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
        own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
        because I am involved in mankind. 
        And therefore never send to know for whom 
        the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 
    
        –John Donne
    

[https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html](https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html)

------
thanatosmin
I'm surprised his Wikipedia page is so sparse. Maybe now would be a good time
for someone more knowledgable to expand it?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hudak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hudak)

------
melling
He was only 62. Bjarne Stroustrup is a couple of years older and Donald Knuth
is nearing 80 and he's still productive.

I was reading this a couple days ago: [http://www.macstories.net/stories/life-
after-cancer-how-the-...](http://www.macstories.net/stories/life-after-cancer-
how-the-iphone-helped-me-achieve-a-healthier-lifestyle/)

It makes me wonder if in the very near future wearables will help give people
enough added feedback, etc so they might get a few extra years. I'm sure
someone with Paul's abilities had a lot more to contribute.

------
jacobevelyn
I had the great fortune to have him serve as my senior advisor when I was an
undergrad. A warm and wonderful man.

I'll never forget the feeling of awe I had in one of his classes when he
showed us that the function `fix`, defined as `fix f = f (fix f)`, could in
fact be used to compute things!

------
hyperliner
"In some ways, I think the best way to let go is to hold on. To hold onto the
memories and the love that transcends the physical body. To hold onto those
around you that have shared in loving the one you are letting go. To hold onto
the only thing that is in your control- the actions you take in this
unpredictable world."

:-(

------
jayaraj
I first learnt Haskell more than a decade back while working on a project at
the Indian Institute of Science. Profoundly changed my perspective on
programming.

------
vitno
I had the fortune of meeting Paul a couple of years ago. He was a really nice
guy & a very inspiring person to talk with.

------
ghc
I had the fortune to work down the hall from Paul a couple of years ago. There
was some confusion as to whether he had died yet when I got an email about the
link I posted a few days ago, so today I find myself mourning for a second
time over the death of a truly bright light who touched many people's lives.

------
billrobertson42
I read his paper, "Conception, Evolution, and Application of Functional
Programming Languages," and used it for work on a project while getting my
master's degree.

If you're interested in functional programming, I highly recommend it. It
explains many of the things that you've heard about FP, and it very well
written.

------
dsg42
Here's his eulogy from the Yale Daily News:

[http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/30/hudak-spirited-
sayb...](http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/30/hudak-spirited-saybrugian-
and-cs-prof-succumbs-to-cancer/)

------
niix
We lost a good one. I've been struggling with learning Haskell for awhile now,
and this is even more motivation to put my nose to the grindstone and learn
how this mans brain ticked.

------
chaostheory
Beyond the memories of his friends and family, he'll live forever through his
great work. I would think that's what most of us strive for.

------
jug
Heaven will become beautiful now. I don't know more Haskell than I learnt at
university, but even from that alone, I saw it was something special. I'll
never forget that and the impression it made on me.

I particularly remember a short application I had to write down on paper on
the exam; I did it well enough and I thought what I wrote was so beautiful and
simple... I think Haskell developers will know what I'm talking about. The
best applications almost look like magic.

If Haskell was a traditional writen language, I think it would have been
pretty well known and studied, like hieroglyphs or some other language carving
out its own niche. Sometimes I feel like this whole programming world has so
many interesting, exciting, and thought provoking things going on within it
that the rest of the world will never come to know. Haskell was one of those
things to me and I think it's unfortunate that it's such a closed world.

------
jvoorhis
Paul has been a huge inspiration for me. For a time, I would read printed
copies of his papers during the ride home. He was also kind enough to make
time for me when I emailed him with a question about his computer music code.

I believe I am better off because of Paul and I am sure many more feel the
same way.

------
BorisMelnik
RIP Paul, very sad. He has achieved what I have been trying to achieve my
entire life (seemingly) an eternal memory or creating something great that
will be remembered for generations to come. You will be missed.

------
Enzolangellotti
Would you advise Haskell to someone who has just started programming (working
on Learning Python the hard way) and is interested in learning mathematics
(from the high school level onwards)?

P.S. I want to study algorithms too but I'm just a beginner and the priority
is mathematics (as it's one of the few subjects I seem to be able to
concentrate on). I found a secondhand copy of Professor Sedgewick's book for
ten euros, it's the manual for one of his MOOCs , should I go with it?

~~~
teirce
Haskell is an amazing language. I've only spent a brief amount of time with
it, but I've seen what others can do with it, and I'm very impressed.

That said, I don't know that I'd recommend it to someone who has just started
programming. I think that it'd be harder to appreciate it, since a lot of the
rules that Haskell breaks / puts in place aren't things you've run into too
often.

I'd recommend becoming at least relatively familiar with normal programming
paradigms and then giving Haskell a go. It certainly deserves your time, but
without proper appreciation of what exactly it does, I think its unforgiving
nature could become discouraging.

edit: Of course, if you find normal paradigms boring / uninteresting, Haskell
may be just the place for you. It's also really, really good for mathematic
applications.

~~~
Enzolangellotti
Thank you, I guess trying won't hurt, nobody has ever regretted learning
anything after all. As for feeling discouraged, being stupid (in various
degrees) is part of the learning process I believe. Couldn't say I'm learning
anything otherwise. I will try Haskell alongside Python to see how it goes.

~~~
eru
If you don't mind feeling stupid, Haskell will be very well suited for you. :)

~~~
Enzolangellotti
Don't worry, I've been living with the feeling for a long time ;)

------
pvaldes
"The family of Paul R. Hudak created this Life Tributes page to make it easy
to share your memories"

[http://www.siskbrothers.com/obituaries/Paul-
Hudak/](http://www.siskbrothers.com/obituaries/Paul-Hudak/)

------
appleslicemusic
An amazing man. Amazing pianist, and just awesome person.

------
likeclockwork
His paper "An Algebraic Theory of Polymorphic Temporal Media" has been a
constant source of inspiration for me for the last few years.

------
caycep
I shopped one of his classes...quite sad, he was still young.

------
appleslicemusic
A wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful man.

------
davedx
R.I.P.

------
kiyoto
Apparently, Haskell had a side effect.

RIP. What a great mind =/

------
noblethrasher
_The Haskell School of Expression_ is a beautiful book that I recommend to
anyone that wants to learn Haskell, or to just appreciate functional
programming.

Also, I motion for a black bar.

~~~
mreiland
what is a 'black bar'?

~~~
DanBC
On HN the top orange[1] bar is sometimes changed to black when someone
significant[2] to computing dies.

[1] orange unless you've got enough karma to set it to some other value

[2] significant to computing is not the right phrase here, sorry for
clumsiness.

~~~
nathannecro
Perhaps just: "someone significant to the community".

------
owenversteeg
Black bar anyone?

For those who don't know, a black bar is for people that die that HN honors by
changing the `topcolor` color to black. You can do it yourself in your
profile.

Fun history trivia: A few years ago the black bar used to be on top of the
topbar. [0,1] Now it looks like this [2]

[edit] I can't find any very recent deaths that confirm the change so I may be
wrong. Whoops.

[0] Steve Jobs,
[http://web.archive.org/web/20111006185350/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20111006185350/http://news.ycombinator.com/news)

[1] Dennis Ritchie,
[http://web.archive.org/web/20111013063604/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20111013063604/http://news.ycombinator.com/news)

[2] Tampermonkey Script
[https://gist.github.com/ultimapanzer/68f601ef9ab7f599d3ce](https://gist.github.com/ultimapanzer/68f601ef9ab7f599d3ce)

------
innguest
Paul Hudak died after making a huge contribution to the world. The research
field he set in motion will keep on benefiting people for decades to come.

