I'm kind of shocked there hasn't been a horrified response from HN Haskell fans.
"What an ignorant fool?! How could he abandon the holy grail of Haskell?!" -- like that? :)
For someone who wrote a lot of compiler and program analysis code in Haskell I can hardly imagine myself writing the same in C++. That said, I can totally understand the author's perspective. As the author writes, "I really wanted to like Haskell. [...] But when it comes down to it, I am an object-oriented programmer, and Haskell is not an object-oriented language." And I think that's the core of his troubles. I can imagine it's hard to write Haskell with an OOP mindset and expect it to be easy. I'm not saying pure functional programming is superior to imperative object-oriented programming -- they are just different and require different mindsets. Before I learned Haskell in the university the only language I had done any substantial amount of programming in was C++. And I had to make quite a switch in how I think of algorithms. I remember a lot of my classmates struggled with writing even the simplest programs in Haskell. But after some time I've really started understanding the Haskell way of thinking and, to me, it's easier to program in this language than in C++ which I regard as unnecessarily verbose and baroque.
Personally, I wouldn't even think about writing a compiler in C++ unless I was feeling masochistic. That said, I have never written a compiler in C++. So, should my experience in writing compilers in C++ have been greater and my experience with Haskell lower, it would have made sense for me to use the tool I knew how to use best (C++). Since I don't know how to write a correct compiler in C++ as fast as in Haskell, the only feeling I can express towards the author is pure and unadulterated awe.
PS: On that note, I've been shocked to discover that a horrified response from Haskell fans is expected. Haskell community is one of the friendliest and non-opinionated I've known, so I wonder why Haskellers are perceived as being akin to closet trolls.
The down side is that taking full advantage of metaprogramming in C++11 requires learning a very large and complicated language. But once you've done that, it's really not so bad.
Haskell having a high barrier to entry likely helps that along a great deal though.
Compare the quality in commentary on nontrivial subjects between /r/programming and /r/haskell for instance.
There will be an enormous amount of disinformation in the former, a state that is incredibly confusing for someone that lacks familiarity in the specific domain as discerning noise will not be easy.
On the other hand, /r/haskell largely in part does not comment as though they were an authority when they are not sufficiently competent to comment on a subject, so the signal remains high.
The subbreddit is fairly active given the niche current user base, and it is big enough that there are a decent amount of domain experts that comment.
The subreddit is also very polite.
I do not recall ever seeing a flame war break out there, which is notable compared to how often any discussion on the topic will break down into inanity, something which even occasionally happens here (such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6190005 from a couple of days ago).
> The subreddit is also very polite.
Yes, it is very refreshing: it is a complex language, but the community has not become elitist, and is instead polite, considerate and mature.
(Just kidding, I love GHC and its precise & helpful error messages. No sarcasm implied.)