Why does everyone hate Haskell, jazz, and pure math?
Claims that “everyone hates” Haskell, jazz, and pure mathematics are challenged as oversimplifications: most people barely encounter them, and those who do often find them niche, complex, or wrapped in a culture of perceived snobbery rather than actively detestable. Commenters contrast Haskell’s powerful type system and functional concepts—now influencing mainstream languages—with its steep learning curve, lazy evaluation pitfalls, weak records, and limited industry adoption. Jazz and pure math are likewise described as rewarding for those who invest attention and background knowledge, with some arguing that pure theory often pays off centuries later, while others doubt most abstract work will ever have practical use.
Premise: Do People Really “Hate” These Things?
- Several commenters reject the premise: most people don’t even know what Haskell or pure math are, so “hate” is overstated.
- Jazz “hate” is seen as more of an internet meme; many find it widely acceptable as background or lounge music.
- Relative to their domains, jazz, Haskell, and pure math are niche, not widely despised.
Haskell: Promise vs Reality
- Supporters say Haskell delivers strong software-engineering benefits: powerful types, referential transparency, and expression-based design that make refactoring and correctness easier.
- Critics argue the language was shaped more by theorists than by practical needs: poor record support, historically rough build tooling, and difficulty integrating into typical industry stacks.
- Some view Haskell as great for learning and thinking differently about code, but “useless” or impractical for everyday work, especially web development.
- There’s debate over community culture: past smugness vs a more pragmatic, quieter majority today.
Laziness, Performance, and Space Leaks
- Skeptics report painful experiences: unpredictable performance, space leaks that were hard to track, and projects ultimately rewritten in other languages.
- Defenders counter that these are known, solvable issues via strictness annotations, better data structures, and profiling; they compare this to dealing with slowness or undefined behavior in other languages.
- Some simply prefer strict languages, finding Haskell’s evaluation model too opaque.
Functional Programming and Its Influence
- Many highlight specific wins: referential transparency, immutability, sum types, and expression-based code that composes well.
- Others complain about overuse of higher-order chains that hurt readability and obscure performance, especially in imperative languages adopting FP features.
- Several note that many FP ideas long predate Haskell (e.g., Lisp, ML), and that their migration into mainstream languages is broader than Haskell alone.
Jazz and Pure Math
- Jazz: perceived difficulty and elitist subcultures coexist with genuine enjoyment; complexity can be either engaging or fatiguing depending on the listener.
- Pure math: often misunderstood; practitioners describe it as research done for its own sake, with occasional long-delayed applications.
- There’s disagreement on how much pure math will ever be useful, but recognition that some once-“useless” ideas became foundational.