That's one of the nice things about the Haskell community. The experts tend to be much, much better than in other places. There's much more depth there than memorization of quirks and ability to hold large numbers of arbitrary, disconnected pieces in your head all at once.
So, while becoming an expert haskeller is enviable, intermediate still suggests an ability to tackle a
Fantastic array of problems.
Indeed - it's definitely one of the best places to be if you like to be surrounded by incredibly talented, but also very humble folks.
In fact I'd go so far as to say that the pool of wicked smart people who would love to build stuff in Haskell represents a significant opportunity to start ups right now. How have you found hiring for your company?
Well while I can produce large swaths of elegant code when I need crazy instances I usually call upon my colleague for his invaluable assistance. I don't claim to be an expert in the language. Many people know much more about it than me.
I've been trying to come up with a general way to rank Haskell experience, and so far I've got:
Beginner: Can read the basic syntax, knows about E.G. Monads and folds
Intermediate: Understands and can use the more advanced classes like Applicative, Arrow, lenses, and how to use things like fix
Advanced: ??? Makes new powerful classes/libraries like Pipe, Conduit, or Netwire? Can easily translate a problem domain into a concise and elegant type representation.
Maybe there needs to be some more layers in there, I don't know... also the advanced level feels weak to me. I'm still somewhere between beginner and intermediate myself.
Well I don't claim to understand the mathematical basis of Monads, and I don't use arrows and just started using applicative more often. Lenses rock and I have used those for a long time. I do build my own Monad Transformers so maybe I am still a beginning with intermediate tendencies. :-)
Are you serious?! If you're only intermediate - then there's no hope for me!