Haskell
From Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau
Haskell lives somewhere close to the point where logic, math and (formal) languages is the same thing as computer science. For example, it is insanely simple (=little code) to write compilers in haskell, compared to in many other languages. Writing code in haskell may sometimes feel like doing machine-math.
Haskell is useful for programming very high level code, when it is more important to conserve the time spent by the programmer for creating solutions to problems than it is to conserve the time spent by the computing hardware to compute those solutions. Or, when beauty is sought after.
Haskell contains an interface for invoking C-code for those very few problems that actually need to be solved quickly. Also, remember that when the size of the data sets approach infinity, it does not really matter which programming language is used for processing data, as long as the computational complexity is kept low.
[edit] Similar languages
- Agda - Semi-automatic theorem prover with dependent types
- Coq - kindof same as Agda
- ML, the metalanguage
- Erlang - if haskell is elvish, erlang is robotish
- Etc
[edit] Resources
- Learn You A Haskell For Great Good - Go there and read.
- Hoogle - search engine for haskell libraries
- haskell.org
- Real World Haskell (online book)
- Wikibooks on haskell