Lambda the Ultimate

Why People Aren't Using Haskell
started 3/21/2001; 3:57:02 AM - last post 8/25/2001; 1:24:25 AM

Ehud Lamm - Why People Aren't Using Haskell

3/21/2001; 3:57:02 AM (reads: 1099, responses: 4)

Why People Aren't Using Haskell

One more attempt to answer the time honoured question If you are so smart, why aren't you so rich? Or its programming language version: Why isn't my favorite language popular?

We discussed some of these sociological questions around here in the past.

I, for one, agree with Ritchie: language success is based on many factors other than technical merit.

While we are on this subject, check this CrossTalk article. It is an attempt to answer a previous article that, more or less, claimed that Ada is 'dead'. Another language, different niches - many similar issues.

Posted to general by Ehud Lamm on 3/21/01; 3:59:18 AM

andrew cooke - Re: Why People Aren't Using Haskell

3/21/2001; 4:21:33 AM (reads: 1132, responses: 0)

First: Haskell isn't dead. People are looking at consolidating libraries; for signs of life see the Haskell mail list.

But why is it important that Haskell become a "real-world language"? That's not the only measure of success. It's also important to have places to develop new ideas without having to worry too much about backwards compatability, for example.

While Haskell has some practical advantages over OCaml (mainly syntax), almost(?) everything that's possible in Haskell can be done in OCaml (or CL for that matter) with little extra effort - and those languages also support OOP, imperative programming, and other features (higher order functors in OCaml, for example) that make them more practical for larger projects.

Haskell is just fine as it is for exploring the issues associated with a very pure approach to functional programming. Turning it into a more general language would duplicate what we already have and lose something unique.

Of course, I'm not saying it's perfect - more libraries would be nice - but it is an excellent tool for learning about some fun ideas in computer science: exactly what it was intended to be.

[compare this with Ada that, afaik, was intended to be a popular, large-scale language...]

andrew cooke - Re: Why People Aren't Using Haskell

4/2/2001; 8:57:50 AM (reads: 1025, responses: 0)

See here for further discussion on the Haskell mailing list.

andrew cooke - Re: Why People Aren't Using Haskell

4/3/2001; 4:43:04 AM (reads: 1012, responses: 0)

This is a good defence of the original article (takes a while to get going).

Dejan Jelovic - Re: Why People Aren't Using Haskell

8/25/2001; 1:24:25 AM (reads: 954, responses: 0)

> But why is it important that Haskell become a
> "real-world language"?

It's important to me. I make a living doing software engineering, and think that Haskell would make me slightly more productive on some of my projects. However, the lack of libraries, spartan environment (when compared to Visual C++ and JBuilder, two programs I use every day), and lack of programmers who know the language is making this impossible.

Dejan
http://www.jelovic.com