Learning Haskell makes you a better programmer?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday, December 25, 2012 11:37:42 Walter Bright wrote:
> I've often heard that claim, but here's an article with what the substance
> is:
> 
> http://dubhrosa.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/lessons-learning-haskell.html?m=1
> 
> Note that D offers this style of programming, with checkable purity,
> immutability and ranges. I think it is a very important paradigm.

I totally agree that learning a functional language makes you a better 
programmer, and I think that it's awesome that we can program that way in D. 
However, to actually really gain the benefit in terms of learning, you probably 
have to actually program in a functional language, because you're _forced_ to 
learn how to program in a functional paradigm, whereas in D it's only an 
option for when you want to do so. And Haskell is a particularly good language 
for it, because its laziness forces it to be pretty much purely functional 
whereas a number of other functional languages have more back doors to 
imperative programming and mutation.

Either way, it's great that D allows us to program in such paradigms.

- Jonathan M Davis