Since hearing about it we have a port of a large project in progress and whilst the typing is nice, the improvement in build time alone looks like making it a worthwhile exercise.
Big things to come I suspect, particularly with it feeling like such a natural progression of so much of FB's recent JS work.
It was a long while ago now, if you had learnt anything before you got there it was pretty much guaranteed that you'd seen either BASIC or C. :)
The internet wasn't what it is now either so most people who had done some coding before were indeed lacking in understanding of the fundamental principles of what they were doing – I know I certainly was. There may have been outliers yet beyond the "I've been playing with code" crew but I didn't meet any.
I'm not at all suggesting it would be good reasoning today, but I think it helps to show that the underlying idea that FP is a good way to introduce people to code whilst ensuring they develop a strong theoretical understanding was true then and should still be today.
When I went to university for CS, Haskell was used in the introductory programming courses and this was one of the main reasons we were told about.
Another goal was to take the people who had been learning to code in their spare time and put them on more even footing with those who were totally new, force them to think about things from first principles rather than lean on acquired habits, etc.
I had already been coding for a long time by that point but it was the first time I saw a functional language and I think it addressed both goals very well.
Learning new things is great but don't be afraid to reach for familiar tools.
Using one or two new things on a project rather than 10 you'll be both more likely to get somewhere, and more likely to pick up the newer elements well.
Since hearing about it we have a port of a large project in progress and whilst the typing is nice, the improvement in build time alone looks like making it a worthwhile exercise.
Big things to come I suspect, particularly with it feeling like such a natural progression of so much of FB's recent JS work.