What happens when you troll the haskell community

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45 points·jackpirate··8 comments

I've sadly lost the logs, but I witnessed a great trolling on #haskell, where someone insisted that Haskell's map function was a for loop because the word "forall" appears in the type.

That's the good old style of trolling, where someone says something completely ridiculous, but which they could have only arrived at by knowing much better.

The best trolls are those that are identifiable to the well informed observer while remaining seemingly genuine to the community at large.

This triggered the kind of delirious laugh that only 11 hours of billable programming time could enable

Favorite line:

"We are cooperating with you, you're just not aware that your goal is learning Haskell"

The Haskell community in general is very friendly, and keen to help people learn. I haven't seen much in the way of "I know Haskell, therefore I'm better than people who don't" (in fact, 'language wars' are actively discouraged on #haskell). No 'STFU, noob' either. No rockstar ninjas.

Well the thing is Haskell unless it is a first language have so massive and painful learning curve that learning haskell itself is good enough rite of passage.

Assimilation.

Only way to cure trolls.

If you want to cure the troll, assimilate. If you want to cure the channel, set it to registered nicks only and pray you've got a good ban bot!

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