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Comment by yokohummer7 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that the brand new Haskell Programming book, which seems to be recommended nowadays among Haskellers, is being written by bitemyapp (the one described in the first link). He's been bitching other languages, especially Go. He even stated Haskell is simpler than Go, which just shows his twisted reality. It is very unfortunate that such a toxic person is influential to the community.

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On the contrary, I think that is a good side of Chris Allen (@bytemyapp), he truly believes that everyone (I'm not even narrowing it down to software engineers) has capability to comprehend the core ideas of Haskell and become as proficient with it as you are with other languages and then delve into more evolved topics when you feel like it. Like a true evangelist. He is frustrated with misrepresentation of Haskell in wider programmers' community and to his credit he is working hard to fix this. (Though his book is quite pricey :) ) I don't really know how much of a Haskell fanatic he is, but one should not turn his back on a person just because he is saying something you disagree with or don't want to hear (like belittling other languages).

Like a true evangelist. He is frustrated with misrepresentation of Haskell in wider programmers' community and to his credit he is working hard to fix this.

Learn yourself a Haskell was a great book. Many friends/colleagues picked up Haskell with that book and were really happy with it. @bitemyapp 's book may be better (I don't know, I didn't read it), but he seems to try to bash LYAH at nearly every possible occasion.

http://ircbrowse.net/browse/haskell?id=19614985&timestamp=14...

https://lobste.rs/s/5pqc1y/learn_you_a_haskell_for_great_goo...

http://bitemyapp.com/posts/2014-12-31-functional-education.h...

I think this is undeserved and perhaps toxic (especially coming from someone who wrote a competing work).

Personally, when first learning Haskell, I found LYAH intolerable. I've known people who did get a lot of value out of it, but it's not for everyone. I really couldn't stand it. I haven't bothered to read HPFFP yet, as it's rather more basic than is useful to me anymore, but a friend that had similar complaints about LYAH has been finding HPFFP incredibly helpful. There really are some serious problems with other major educational resources, especially for some audiences, and I don't think it's a problem to recognize that.

> I think this is undeserved and perhaps toxic (especially coming from someone who wrote a competing work).

He started writing a competing work several years after starting to "bash" LYAH. One of the reasons he started writing his own book is exactly because he doesn't think LYAH is particularly good.

His opinion. But I agree with you that this is undeserved. Perhaps it would sound less toxic/ungrateful if/when he publishes (to free online access) a part of his book that is equivalent to LYAH (in terms of covered material).

But Haskell is simpler than Go (in a similar way that Lisp is), so that's a poor example of "twisted reality".

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