Introduction to Haskell Programming Language
You may have read about a lot of languages. But when you hear about Haskell, the first thing that comes to mind is, “Here comes another so-called wannabe language”. The first question that comes to mind is; WHY? Why is there a need for so many languages? Why does it need to be so difficult? Why is python or Ruby so easy when compared to C or Java? And what the heck is Haskell?
Don’t worry. I am here today to answer all your questions. But first things first, what is Haskell? Normally, you wouldn’t find many people learning or talking about this language. The reason being, Haskell is not as simple as C or Python. YES! I said C. I have been a programmer for C for the past 4 years, and I actually find it very interesting. But that’s not the same case with Haskell.
I learnt Haskell because I find it very challenging, unlike C or Python.Python is an extremely awesome language and very much flexible. You can almost do anything you want with that. Your imagination is only the limit in Python. Now, instead of me bragging about Python, let us start with Haskell. Because that’s what we are here for, right?
But before you proceed to read any further, let me WARN you. This language is not for beginners; atleast not for absolute beginners. If you don’t have any prior programming experience, Haskell will give you the feel of ROCKET SCIENCE. And that’s in bold. Programmers will understand it.
Haskell Programming Language is a pure functional language. Or the proper term would be Mathematical. Any person who likes mathematics will be extremely comfortable with Haskell dynamic programming, especially with theorems.
But what is Functional Programming?
To be more specific, in the functional programming language, the original computation method is the introduction of functions to arguments. Alongside other features these types of languages provide, functional programming offers an extreme small and compact method for coding programs, including large abstraction methods to structure them, and it needs a mindset that knows how to word around its way to math which supports reasoning for programs, somewhat similar to theorems.
Such kind of languages is leading in the development of programming language design. All other programming languages such as PHP, Basic, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Scala; all of these are high-level programming that express lambda expressions or closures.
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Pure functional languages introduce fully immutable structures, and these functions do not have any kind of side effects. This function takes all immutable structures together as some kind of input and then creates a new similar structure as the given output.
Examples of adding integers in:
Python
>>>a=2
>>>b=3
>>>a+b
>>>5
C++
template <int x, int y>
struct add {
static constexpr int value = x + y;
};
int main() {
auto z = add<1,2>::value;
std::cout << z << std::endl;
return 0;
}
Haskell
add :: Int -> Int -> Int
add d e = d + e
main :: IO ()
main = do
let f = add 1 2
putStrLn $ show f
Haskell is actually an awesome programming language. Its math is extremely complicated and straight to the point, unlike others, where programs cannot be proven to be correct, and in most cases, here, in Haskell, they can, and if they compile, they will run without any issues. This, however, introduces new challenges.
Let us say, for example; you cannot change even a single var here(var means variable). Recursion is the key to everything here. But you don’t need to worry. Once you get the hang of that, you will actually feel at home writing applications in Haskell. The only part you would need to worry about is when I said, “If they compile”. Hehehe…, that’s the most trickiest part in Haskell: ‘Compiling’.
Why Haskell Programming Language?
As for the above question, I ask, “Why Not?” Haskell is basically a good language to learn. Here, your code is simple and self-contained. There are no hassles or unnecessary indentations here. Haskell Programming Language also works well with ideas. With a decent amount of experience, you can write programs in high level and low-level programming formats.
At one place, where Haskell is a great way to learn mathematics, inversely, on the other hand, it’s also powerful for parallel programming in Haskell, which gives you a good amount of control over your pieces of algorithms as to how your types are structured in memory. Most of the time, people deprive advanced Haskell Programming Language because it looks like too low-level, but if you take a look at its positive note, then this proves that Haskell Functional Programming has the scalable features of low as well as high level.
Haskell is a good start to pick up as a first language. Many obstacles people face when learning Haskell comes because they are too used to other high-level languages like Python or Ruby, but the thing is Haskell Programming Language is too different from them. Thus, if you don’t know anything about programming at all, you won’t have any problem learning it as a first language.
It also much more easier to go from Haskell to learning something else rather than doing the vice-versa. Now you may be thinking that in the beginning, I said, this language is not for beginners. Yes, I said that because I wanted to make sure you don’t waste 30 minutes of your reading this. If you have already invested this much time in reading about Haskell, then it means that you have a strong determination to learn. And that’s what you need to learn this language.
The Cons
Haskell is a great language, but like every other language, Haskell Programming Langauge has its own set of traits. For example, the tooling, the error messages, and the way its system is built are all more complex than they need to be. If you work in GHCi, you would surely notice that error messages are not that helpful here in Python, Golang, or Scala.
Not to mention that some of this is currently being worked on. The Haskell Platform is small and easy to install. Haskell, on the other hand, offers a more stable REPL experience. The package management here have a significant amount of changes recently, and they are still improving. Even the Emacs would be getting a good amount of improvements and new features soon as well.
Though Haskell sounds too harsh as a beginner language, but once you have the basics right, its actually easy to migrate to either low-level languages or high-level languages because of its highly flexible characteristics, unlike in the case of languages like python or Perl, if you learn that first, you will probably never think of learning a low-level language because of its alienated code structure.
Haskell is a considerably large language to learn in detail. In general, I would say that Haskell is a great first language to learn. The only part worth worrying about is that it may need more effort to get you started and keep on continuing on a constant basis because of the issues with its tools, especially if you want to build an interesting program.
If I were aiming to teach Haskell programming language to people, I would make the installation procedure more painless. One needs to have a proper set of modules and the right version installed to have properly configured GHCi to compile problems.
Learning Haskell Programming Language means you need to think in a functional manner. Many new programming languages allow the functional style of programming, but most developers do not make full usage of these features since they think in a more of object-oriented pattern, the reason being their background comes from learning C or C++.
The Most Awaited Question
Now, for the most awaited question… What are the practical uses of Haskell?
Haskell is certainly used a lot in the industry, but not as commonly as C# or Java. So if you just want to learn it to help you get Haskell programming jobs, it might actually be a waste of time. A better reason to learn Haskell is to get you familiar with the functional style approach. This will happen faster with Haskell than with another functional language like F# or Scala. You can also check my next blog on Haskell vs Scala to know the difference.
This is because if you get too irate with the functional style, other languages have an option to switch to the object-oriented approach. But that’s not the case with Haskell. Haskell Programming Language has a construct that forces you to write only in functional style since no other approach is available. The last thing you can do is forfeit writing an application.
Conclusion
The Endpoint of this whole blog is if you are looking for a job in Haskell, wait until NASA or NSA starts hiring beginner Haskell programmers for the job. Yup! That’s how rare it is. But if you are learning because you like challenges, then Haskell is the way. It will make your code much better in any language.
It will make you understand your problem in a proper manner, break them into proper parts and make the need for debugging as little as possible. If you are learning Haskell and some other programming languages as well, then Haskell is best suited for you because it will make a wise Programmer.
Related Articles
Here are some articles that will help you to get more detail about the Haskell Programming Language, so just go through the link.
