I am a frontend developer and I wanted to learn Haskell for a long time. But I just can't wrap my head around it. Is Elm or Purescript a good way to ease into it? If so, which one is better?
Is it really no simpler? A few common complexity complaints i hear about Haskell that don't apply to purescript in order of frequency:
- Haskell is lazy by default
- has too many language extensions
- records pollute global namespace
- has fmap and map
- $ is confusing
In some of the standard libraries, yes, that's true. However, it's possible to use PureScript without the standard libraries, and use alternatives such as Preface (a teaching library) or Neon (an alternative to Prelude)
https://github.com/paf31/purescript-preface
http://pursuit.purescript.org/packages/purescript-neon/0.1.1
- I'm not sure what you mean by too many language extensions. That's kind of like saying a language has too many libraries -- just use the ones you need. It doesn't make the language more complicated.
- The records problem is a problem, but that doesn't make Haskell more complicated.
- I never deal with the fmap/map problem because I use ClassyPrelude, and there are other even more trivial solutions out there (to the extent that that's a problem). Also, <$> is a thing.
- Doesn't purescript also have the $ operator? You could certainly define it if not. In any case, if you're not comfortable using $ and similar combinators, you're probably not going to find purescript easy...