Humor/Flakes

Haskell Flakes

Shamelessly stolen from comp.lang.ml -- ed

(Note there's actually a response at the end of this message...)

[FADE IN]

[A young boy sits at a table in the kitchen. Outside the window we see the morning sun setting in a rich blue sky over rolling green hills and yellow flowers. The young boy's ravishing mother stands by the kitchen counter, looking busy making bag lunches.]

[Close up of the boy looking dejectedly at his bowl of cereal.]

Boy:	"Mom, I'm sick of ordinary cereals! Don't you have anything new?"

Mom:	"Try this, honey!" [hands the boy a colorful package, the words Haskell emblazoned across the front and top, over a large lambda logo]

Boy:	[after pouring the cereal flakes into his bowl and cramming a spoonful into his mouth] "Mmm! What is it?"

Mom:	"It's called Haskell! The ingredients are all natural! No chemical additives!"

Boy:	"And it tastes great too!" [rotates his baseball cap back-to-front and with a look of determination starts shoveling the flakes greedily down his throat]

[Pan to Dad walking in, suit jacket draped over one arm and still fumbling boyishly with his tie.]

Dad:

"Gosh! Something sure smells good this morning!" [sniffs experimentally at the Haskell flakes, then notices the box of Haskell cereal sitting prominently in the middle of the table; lifts the box and peers at it; suddenly his eyes widen with recognition] "Hey! Is this that Haskell I've been hearing about?"

Mom:	"Yes, it's new and improved!" [takes the Haskell box and taps one finger conspicuously at the place where a large "1.4" is visible]

Dad:	"Wow, count me in too!" [forgets about his tie and slips quickly into a chair at the breakfast table; lifts an empty cereal bowl expectantly in Mom's direction]

Mom:	[smiles as if she knew this would happen, then steps forward, holds the box of Haskell in both hands next to her glowing face and looks straight at the camera] "Haskell! A great way to start the morning!"

Dad:	[in the background, whining] "Honey!"

Mom:	[now laughing, shakes her head as if to say 'tsk, tsk', and hurries back to the table to serve her hubby a fresh bowl of Haskell flakes]

[FADE OUT]

---

David Hanley (david@nospan.netright.com) wrote:

Is there any language which is a somewhat simplified ML? I like the type system of ML, but the all-encompassing language is somewhat complex. I suppose what I am looking for would be something like strongly-typed scheme.

Try Haskell. Haskell's lazy semantics are simpler to reason with than ML's. The language has a lot of sugar, but the syntax is pretty intuitive (compared to SML's, at least, which seems to get a lot of complaints). Haskell's module language is much, much simpler than SML's, yet nearly as powerful [1]. Also, since there are no implicit side-effects, there are fewer gotcha's in general.

[1] Nicklish, Jan and Peyton Jones, Simon. "An Exploration of Modular Programs." The Glasgow Workshop on Functional Programming, 1996.

-- 
Frank Christoph                 Next Solution Co.      Tel: 0424-98-1811
christo@nextsolution.co.jp                             Fax: 0424-98-1500