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Gershom's Letter to a Young Haskell Enthusiast, summarized. I removed a lot of words, kept the themes, moved a few around a bit.
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# Letter to a Young Haskell Enthusiast, by Gershom Bazerman. | |
Condensed from: http://comonad.com/reader/2014/letter-to-a-young-haskell-enthusiast/ | |
The following letter is about tendencies that come with the flush of excitement of learning any new thing. | |
It is written specifically, because if we don't talk specifics, the generalities make no sense. | |
It is a letter full of things I want to remember. | |
You’ve entered the world of strongly typed functional programming, and it is great. | |
You want to share the great things you’ve learned, and you want to slay all the false statements in the world. | |
Do you want to teach people new wonderful things? Or do you want to confirm that you are programming better? | |
A part of you secretly wants to do the latter. That part stands in the way of communicating. | |
Haskell wasn’t built on tearing down rotten ideas but showing we didn’t need those ideas after all. | |
\In functional programming, our proofs are not by contradiction, but by construction. Learn that ethic. | |
Types are for fallible people. This is a language for simple things and clever things alike. | |
We want to keep simple things simple so that tricky things are possible. | |
Math is not a prerequisite for Haskell. Programming can be fun, and this means that math can be fun too. | |
You don’t need that stuff to be a great Haskell programmer. | |
The important about spreading knowledge is that this is for everyone. Believe in everyone, attack nobody. | |
If you want to teach people, you have to empathize. Anything you do or say that gets in the way of that | |
is your fault. And you don’t get to judge that — others do. You have failed to communicate. | |
Don’t declare that they should explain themselves to you, although you may politely ask. | |
Remember that they were put off by your actions, not by your existence. | |
If your conversation turned into an argument, learn from the experience. Think about how you can change. | |
Be quick to apologize and retract. What is there to lose? Only your pride. What is there to gain? Integrity. | |
There is a big internet full of people, and you don’t need to be everybody’s mentor. | |
Just avoid being anybody’s enemy. | |
Other people have better things to do than judge you. If anyone's self-esteem should be cared for, | |
it is that of the people you are talking to. You must believe in yourself to be willing to learn new things, | |
and if you want to cultivate more learners, you must cultivate that self-belief in others. | |
If your goal is to have the widest, nicest, most diverse, and most fun Haskell community possible, | |
and to interact in an atmosphere of mutual respect and consideration, | |
then it is the only thing that will leave you satisfied. | |
Knowledge is not imposing. Knowledge is fun. Don’t only lecture, but continue to learnLearn to value all opinions, | |
because they all come from experiences. It is not just the tools that matter but the ideas, | |
and you will find they come from everywhere. | |
Declaring certain tools, fields, languages, or communities not worth our time is a crutch for us to shortcut | |
evaluating too many options. Be glad that others are charting other paths! | |
If we are generous listeners and attentive teachers, we spread more knowledge, learn more, and enjoy ourselves more. | |
To paraphrase Rilke’s “Letter to a Young Poet”: Knowledge is good if it has sprung from necessity. | |
In this nature of its origin lies the judgement of it: there is no other. | |
------ | |
comment from Michael Maloney: community is often more important than the tools the community is founded around. |
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