> While I have not achieved any sort of nirvana, I do believe that learning Haskell has "enlightened" me insofar as I now look at programming in a fundamentally different way
Can I ask whether Haskell in particular led to this enlightenment, or if functional programming is the underlying concept responsible? I've been considering learning Julia for fun and am wondering if it would impart some of the same benefits.
I think functional programming in general is part of it, for sure.
That said, my first success with functional programming was actually with Racket. Racket is great for learning (in my opinion), but the "lessons" Racket had to offer weren't really solidified for me until I moved to Haskell. At that point, things really started to click.
That could be due to any number of things, though. However, certain concepts (e.g., laziness, typeclasses) are more Haskell-specific (or at least are not common among all functional languages).
Can I ask whether Haskell in particular led to this enlightenment, or if functional programming is the underlying concept responsible? I've been considering learning Julia for fun and am wondering if it would impart some of the same benefits.