To me, the core of Haskell is that: "Haskell is C with one semi-colon per function." This forces you to put all your code into method signatures. This, in turn

To me, the core of Haskell is that: "Haskell is C with one semi-colon per function." This forces you to put all your code into method signatures. This, in turn, means Haskell (or C, if you follow the 1 semicolon rule in C) can understand almost everything about your program. If you actually follow the 1 semicolon rule in C, you'll get very verbose syntax. All of Haskell's syntax is in service of making programming in this style palatable.