> The thought has just occurred to me that conducting a public survey on
> evolution across, familiarity with, and exposure to various
> programming paradigms in students and practitioners of functional
> programming could be illuminating in revealing the correlation between
> degree of familiarity with and experience in
> procedural/object-oriented programming paradigms, and ease of learning
> functional programming in a non-strict, purely functional programming
> language, such as Haskell or Clean.
>
> Could you please outline your evolution as a functional programmer in
> the following manner (preferably in this thread):
>
> A) Your chronological evolution in programming languages; e.g. (in my
> case):
>

>>N-BASIC/N-80 BASIC (1983-1985) -> Pascal (1989) ->
>>Common Lisp / Scheme (T) (1990) -> Scheme (T) (1991) ->
>>C (1993) -> Scheme (T) (1994) -> Tutorial-D
>>(in _Introduction to Database Systems, Seventh Edition_ by C. J. Date)
>>(2000) -> Oracle SQL / PL/SQL (c. 2000-2001) -> Java (c. 2001) ->
>>MIT/GNU Scheme (2005) / PLT Scheme (2005-now) ->
>>Ruby (2007-2008) -> PLT Scheme / GHC Haskell (now)

>
> B) Relevant comments; e.g. (in my case):

>
>
>
>
>

>>I first because fascinated with the idea of a computer program after
>>seeing a demonstration of an application at a personal computer show
>>in circa 1981 for interactive computer music on an Apple ][ j-plus computer
>>(see
>>http://www.apple2world.jp/apple2/COL/MapItems/apple2jplus/apple2jplus...
>>(in Japanese)) (at the Sumitomo Sankaku Building in Shinjuku, Tokyo).  The
>>application involved a user playing music on a music keyboard, and vertical color
>>bar graphs on a horizontal line appearing in real time in response to the notes
>>played on a color monitor.  The idea of a computer exhibiting a form of
>>artificial intelligence by responding to user input in real time according to
>>a computer program seemed fascinating at the time.

>

>>Also interesting at that show was a lunar lander program, which I think
>>was on a black-and-white Commodore VIC-1001 (see "History of Commodore
>>Computers" athttp://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html, for Commodore Japan for
>>1980) (known as the VIC-20 (seehttp://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html) in the
>>United States, where it was released a year later), in which the player's
>>character would occasionally fall into a ditch while running across the screen,
>>which I found extremely humorous.

>

>>After that, I first started out in programming in 1983 with N-BASIC on
>>the NEC PC-8001 (see
>>http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0001.htmland
>>http://park10.wakwak.com/~pinevill/image/nec/PC8001.JPG) (I was a poor
>>student at the time, so I had no choice but to code on coding sheets and
>>manually to enter my code in computers line by line at computer showrooms).  
>>I planned to write and sell my own computer program in order to purchase my
>>own computer; alas, this plan later failed miserably (my N-80 BASIC pocketbook
>>accounting program, written on a PC-8001 mk II (see
>>http://park10.wakwak.com/~pinevill/image/nec/PC8001mkII_1.JPG), wouldn't
>>sell), and as a result, I was prohibited from programming between 1985 and
>>1989, when I finally entered college.

>

>>Later, I became exposed to the Apple Macintosh personal computer (see
>>http://applemuseum.bott.org/), and felt excited at its prospects for multimedia
>>applications.  This is when I first became interested in multimedia applications
>>for personal computers.

>

>>Just before entering college, in March of 1989, I visited a computer exhibition
>>at Tokyo Dome featuring the Fujitsu FM TOWNS "hyper-media personal
>>computer" (seehttp://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0029.html).  
>>This computer was essentially a Japanese counterpart to the Macintosh, geared
>> toward starting a home-use-focused multimedia-based personal computer
>>movement in Japan, to counter the business-use-focused PC-9801 personal
>>computers (seehttp://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0011.html)
>>from NEC.  Exposure to the FM TOWNS at this event greatly strengthened my
>>interest in multimedia applications for personal computers, especially on home-use
>>entertainment applications focusing on the use of high-speed three-
>>dimensional color computer graphics and stereo sound in a virtual reality
>>environment.

>

>>Then in college, I became exposed to Scheme in computer science.  I was also
>>briefly exposed to Pascal, Common Lisp, and C, but greatly preferred Scheme
>>because of the emphasis on higher-order programming techniques, which I
>>found greatly helped me to concentrate on what I wanted to program,
>>rather than how to program it.  For similar reasons, I also became interested
>>in Haskell, to which I was also briefly exposed. However, I did not have many
>>opportunities to study Haskell at that time, because the language was not
>>used in the courses that I actually took (as opposed to audited).  I also took
>>a course in Formal Semantics of Programming Languages, which I found to be
>>one of the most interesting courses in computer science.  In particular, the
>>discussions on the operational and denotational semantics of the lambda calculus
>>were especially interesting.

>

>>One difficulty that I had in sustaining my interest in computer science was the
>>lack of any focus on multimedia applications.  While functional programming was
>>very interesting from a theoretical viewpoint, most functional programming
>>courses lacked any focus on multimedia applications.

>

>>After graduation with a Bachelor of Science in computer science, since I was
>>more interested in the theory of programming languages than in business
>>applications, I looked for ways of using this background at work, but
>>unfortunately, most careers in industry did not use any of this background.  I
>>was very exhausted from years of lack of sleep in conquering math phobia and
>>discrete mathematics in eventually passing the course in design and analysis of
>>algorithms, and did not want to proceed immediately to even more years of even
>>less sleep in graduate school.  So, I decided to pursue my study of programming
>>language theory as a hobby, and eventually to find a way somehow to earn
>>income without having to spend time in work (perhaps through writing a book or
>>creating a popular Web site with income from advertisements), so that I could
>>concentrate on studying programming language theory full-time as a hobby, while
>>simultaneously searching for a way to integrate this interest with my other interests
>>in virtual reality and multimedia applications.

>

>>Currently, I work as a Japanese->English translator/interpreter at a patent office
>>in Tokyo, where I translate patents for computer technology while studying
>>programming language theory whenever I have free time during the week after
>>work.

>
> Basically, what led me to the idea of this survey were the following
> thoughts:
>
> 1) A recent discussion on comp.lang.prolog, entitled "How long it
> takes to educate Prolog/CLP programmer?", where Nick Wedd stated, "The
> more C++-like experience they have, the higher this factor [of the
> amount of time required to learn Prolog and CLP compared to that
> required to learn a C++-like language such as Java] will be.

> Logic and mathematics are barely relevant."  Wedd's hypothesis is that
> there exists an inverse correlation between experience in
> object-oriented programming and speed in learning Prolog.  

>I suspect
> that a similar correlation exists between experience both procedural
> and object-oriented programming and speed in learning non-strict,
> purely functional programming languages, such as Haskell or Clean.

>
> 2) A blog entry that I read in 2006 (in Japanese) in which one person
> who desperately wanted to learn programming, but who was inadept in
> the art, failed at learning VB, Perl, Python, C, C++, and Java, but
> was eventually able to learn Haskell (see the (Japanese-language) blog
> entry athttp://d.hatena.ne.jp/scinfaxi/20070523/1179935877).  (He
> then complained that he remained a NEET (one "Not currently engaged in
> Employment, Education or Training") because he had difficulty finding
> a programming job using Haskell.)
>
> At the time, I did not consider this entry surprising, but since then,
> I have discovered that Haskell seems to have a much steeper learning
> curve (at least for me) than Scheme or Ruby (even though I also find
> it highly interesting precisely for this reason).  I am now very
> surprised that somebody who had difficulty with Perl and Python would
> not have such difficulty with Haskell, and suspect that there is an
> inverse correlation between familiarity with alternative programming
> paradigms and the ability to learn a non-strict, purely functional
> programming language such as Haskell or Clean; i.e., the less one
> knows about alternative programming paradigms, the easier it is to
> learn Haskell or Clean.
>
> 3) A discussion I read several years ago (reference unavailable) in
> which somebody once said that students of programming should not learn
> BASIC as a first language because it leads to students writing
> spaghetti code.  Somebody else also wrote (reference unavailable) that
> line BASIC should be especially avoided (presumably for this reason).

>
> Summary:
>
> There seems to be an inverse correlation between familiarity with
> procedural/object-oriented programming languages and ease of learning
> a non-strict, purely functional programming language language, such as
> Haskell or Clean.  A detailed survey might help in investigating this
> correlation.

>
> If you could please briefly outline your evolution in programming
> languages as a functional programmer (preferably in this thread), and
> describe any related thoughts/comments that you have on this
> correlation (or anything else relevant), your assistance in this
> research would be greatly appreciated.
>
> -- Benjamin L. Russell- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -