Haskell is more similar than you realise, it's the difference between this:
withSomeResource $ \resource -> do
someFunctionOn resource
with some_resource() as resource:
some_function_on(resource)
As an outsider, you might expect a type-error to mean that you made a logic error, in practice it usually means you made a typo.
What happens is that the type system forces you to write things in a certain way. You internalize its rules and it moulds your style. You don't try random things until they stick, you write code expecting it to work and knowing why it should, just like you would in Python. It's just that more of your reasoning is being verified. "Verified" is the operative word here - the type system doesn't tell how to do anything.
> it seems like it's maybe quite unhaskellish to have to rely on a naming convention and remembering not to use the return value of the function?
The Python equivalent of the problem here would be:
current_resource = a_resource
with some_resource() as resource:
current_resource = resource
current_resource.some_method()
I think the crux of our discussion is about checked vs unchecked constraints.
When you work on (successful) large codebases, whether in a static or dynamically typed language, there are always rules about style (and I mean this in a broader way than how your code is laid out). For example, in large Python projects, there might be rules about when it is acceptable to monkey-patch. These rules make reasoning about the behaviour of these programs possible without having to read through everything.
Large Haskell projects also have these rules, but Haskellers like to enforce at least some of them using the type system. It takes effort to encode these rules in the type system and it is more difficult to write code that demonstrably follows the rules than implicitly follows them, but the reward for this effort is that it gives you some assurance that the rules are actually being followed everywhere.
For some rules this extra effort makes sense and other times it doesn't. The type system is just another way to communicate intent. Writing the best Haskell doesn't necessarily mean writing the most straight-jacketly typed Haskell, but it does give you that option. Beginners often fall into the trap of wanting to try out the new-and-shiny and making everything more strict than is helpful.
For one-man projects, there's really no advantage to Haskell over Python (with the caveat that you may not remember all of the intricacies of your code in six months and using Haskell you may have encoded more of your assumptions in the type system).