A woman learning Haskell

The newest entry in our "Look at that Haskell idiot and laugh". It's a woman that writes an angry rant because she couldn't remember that... vector product is anti-commutative.

http://betsyhaibel.com/blog/2016-04-29-haskell-vectors-and-implicit-knowledge/

Problem 10 took me a month.
They thought it was too simple to explain. They thought that anyone learning Haskell would have retained all the random topics that are contained in high school precalculus. They thought that anyone learning Haskell would be the Kind Of Person who just “naturally” remembers that sort of stuff.
This could be a rant about the arrogance of the functional programming ivory tower.

Yep, you've seen it: high school pre-calculus is officially "arrogance" of the functional "ivory tower". But there is more: she actually feels that the Haskell community hates her:

Real World Haskell assumes that all truly educated people remember vector-math intricacies off the top of their heads.

Intricacies, ahahahaha! Remembering one of the most basic operations in vector algebra is an "intricacy" now!

I think Haskell is a really pretty language, but I can’t tell if the Haskell community wants me.

Oooh, the discrimination!!! They've included an exercise in a book that she wasted a month solving! The oppression!

It’s still cruel.

I couldn't solve an exercise in a book! Goodbye, cruel world!

And when we encode that cruelty into our educational materials – however accidentally – we turn surviving that cruelty into something we value above all.

Oooh, the evil patriarchy embedding cruelty into geometric problems! And vector product was invented by a man! It's all those evil men, we should cut their balls off!!!

>>6
Yes there was bitching, but there were also pertinent details about her efforts. People are usually too scared of being judged or mocked to show the details of their efforts like this.

Its the reason why in the end I stopped liking bisqwit. He goes to great lengths writing tools to make it appear as though all his programs were perfectly written and conceived from beginning of work to the end. And what does he write? Simple renderers and emulators. He isn't making something with a structure that isn't fully scoped out in advance. Initially, it was satisfying watching his videos, but then, on further reflection and upon actually looking at his work, they started to seem self serving and forced, and ultimately not very interesting.

Compare that to Terry, who is genuine and open and honest as anything. I respect Terry far more because he shows you his work and tells you his thoughts in a completely unscripted way and everything is authentic as well as interesting.