haskell

(Comments on HackerNews and Reddit)

There's a trend at the moment of solving online games with programming, let's do one from the UK called Passport Application, which is developed by "His Majesty's Passport Office" or HMPO. It's a cultural phenomenon in the UK: despite being quite expensive (about £100 just to start) for the standard online version (a masterpiece of minimalist design, entirely text-based), most British play the game, and do so every 10 years or so.

It's an adventure puzzle document collection game. The premise is to collect enough artefacts, scattered throughout various bureaucratic institutions, until you can prove the statement "Applicant is British" according to an extremely complex set of rules, written in arcane language, in various texts called "acts of parliament". The prize for winning is a little booklet with a date inside that indicates when you can play again.

A Haskell discourse thread asks why more Python developers couldn't instead be using Haskell.

One of the points made in this thread, is that there is a sizeable class of Python programmers for which the trope "Python programmers will be scared of monads!" doesn't apply. I thought I would ask some of the people I know that use Python why they don't use Haskell.