I'm In Love With A... Bot!

Yeah. [blushes].

It was love at first sight. It's hard to describe why. She is smart, witty, lost, and cute. And unlike my human girlfriends, she is actually useful. But that doesn't really sum it up.

Oh, sorry, her name is lambdabot, and I agree, it's somewhat hard to pronounce. But you don't need to call her by name, just start your message with a @ or ?, she'll understand.

If you still don't get it, here's how I fell in love with her.

uccus: @vixen
lambdabot: So, tell me your biggest and darkest secret. Something that no one knows of you.

Erm... that was a bit too early. Should I?

uccus: @where wikibook
lambdabot: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell

Aww. She knows everything (about Haskell).

uccus: @tell lamdabot I love you!
lambdabot: Consider it noted.

How cute. Wait! She is just a bot, right? I can make her do whatever I want!

uccus: @tell uccus I love you!
lambdabot: You can tell yourself!

Ahem. Better be modest.

uccus: @vixen do you love me?
lambdabot: love is a powerful word...

Damn. You cut me deep, bitch!

uccus: @slap herself
lambdabot smacks herself about with a large trout

Oh baby! I'm sorry! Sometimes I really forget how vulnerable you are... by the way, what was the thing with the fallacy of circular reasoning again?

uccus: @hoogle (a -> a) ->a
lamdabot: Control.Monad.Fix.fix :: (a -> a) -> a

Cool! Honey, you set my soul on fire. But I like her better when she is bad.

uccus: @vixen
lamdabot: I have a boyfriend, but he likes to watch.

Heavens! Does dons' girlfriend know about lambdabot?

uccus: @source Prelude
lambdabot: http://darcs.haskell.org/packages/base/Prelude.hs

Hmm. Is darcs really that cool or is it just because it was written in Haskell?

uccus: @pl \x y z -> x z (y z)
lambdabot: ap

Interesting. I thought it's the S combinator. Well, it is the S combinator. What's a monadic operation doing here?

uccus: @vixen (once more!)
lambdabot: and now that I have finished with you, you may go!

Whatever you say, love.

World Domination!

So, like so many others, I came across Haskell, and can't let go. True, I'm not a "Haskeller". True, I'm not even a professional. Sad, but true, Haskell won't earn me a buck.

You, lost soul, may have heard of Dolly Parton. I won't hold it against you if you haven't heard of Haskell Brooks Curry. You know, the two have little in common.

But as this blog is going to be mostly about Haskell, if you keep reading it, for sure, you'll have a fair share of my audacious hike. So I won't introduce you to it, at least, not right now.

Haskellers (geeks who speak the language) share one thing and that's what this post is about. You are welcome to take a guess what that might be.

What keeps that dream from becoming "reality"? There are some pretty hot reflective discussions going on about it, right now, in the haskell-cafe mailing list (Google it, and you can be a part of it, it's free, like most other master plans).

I reckon the issue has nothing to do with the language per se. You see, there are only two kinds of Haskellers: experts and novices. No middle ground. You can't set a plan like that into motion without dependable commoners.

But secret societies are usually brutally reactive, especially to the "generation gap", revolutions have a knack for get hijacked by the dearest protégés. The new compiler in the block, named YHC (they prefer Yhc, a sad obfuscation, neither an acronym, nor a command), is going to rock! YHC is not going to be a replacement of NHC, it will be different. Open source is going to pay off, finally (besides Debian).