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You're judging a whole community based on interractions you had with Haskellers most likely many years ago - dons almost never speaks publicly these days, since

by axman6 11y ago

You're judging a whole community based on interractions you had with Haskellers most likely many years ago - dons almost never speaks publicly these days, since moving to SC (which is shame, he's someone I've looked up to and learned a huge amount from). If I were to characterise the OCaml community based on what jdh says, I'd be writing to politicians to ban all use of OCaml everywhere because his comments are toxic, and far more dishonest than I've seen from anyone in the Haskell community.

fp-incompletd 11y ago
I wouldn't begrudge anyone who made similar judgments about the Common Lisp community based on their interactions with some of its more colorful personalities. I further wouldn't disagree that there are major flaws in CL the language. Why do Haskellers have so much difficulty doing likewise? Other than minor concessions, such as records, Haskell is apparently perfect (and spaceleaks are only ever a problem if you're a n00b)... The whole thing reeks of a cult.
- axman6 11y ago
  Your experiences are completely different to mine, and I've been a member of the community for about 8 years now. Haskellers are in general very aware of the flaws in the language, and this isn't limited to records - space leaks are the primary reason for the proliferation of streaming IO libraries. And for records, we've been lead to lenses, which are an extremely powerful abstraction which surpasses, IMO, whats available in most other languages in terms of being able to interact with nested data structures (giving them such a limited definition is doing them a disservice, because they're far more powerful than that). You keep mentioning the use of the "if it compiles, it works" phrase - this is clearly a meme, and often used as a joke, but is also used as a goal for writing reliable software: if we can encode enough of our problem domain into the type system, then we can be much more certain that if we write programs which compile, they likely do what we want them to. If it not a synonym for "If it compiles, it has no bugs and is perfect", which is how you seem to be interpreting it.
lpw25 11y ago
Just a quick note to say that jdh hasn't been an active OCaml user for years. He trolls on behalf of F# these days.
- axman6 11y ago
  He seems pretty active in comments in the linked discussion... BUt I'm pretty sure John also carries a list around with him of reasons why he doesn't like Haskell, just in case he needs it. Truly unpleasant.
pekk 11y ago
On the other hand (without commenting on specifics of Haskell) the parts do represent the whole. People in a community learn tropes from each other. If many of the community's tropes are toxic, the community is toxic in a way that survives the departure of individuals because those individuals really weren't that special.
- axman6 11y ago
  My experience with the Haskell community over the last 8 years has been so far from toxic than I'm not sure where that idea could even come from.

by axman6 11y ago

fp-incompletd 11y ago

I wouldn't begrudge anyone who made similar judgments about the Common Lisp community based on their interactions with some of its more colorful personalities. I further wouldn't disagree that there are major flaws in CL the language. Why do Haskellers have so much difficulty doing likewise? Other than minor concessions, such as records, Haskell is apparently perfect (and spaceleaks are only ever a problem if you're a n00b)... The whole thing reeks of a cult.

axman6 11y ago
Your experiences are completely different to mine, and I've been a member of the community for about 8 years now. Haskellers are in general very aware of the flaws in the language, and this isn't limited to records - space leaks are the primary reason for the proliferation of streaming IO libraries. And for records, we've been lead to lenses, which are an extremely powerful abstraction which surpasses, IMO, whats available in most other languages in terms of being able to interact with nested data structures (giving them such a limited definition is doing them a disservice, because they're far more powerful than that). You keep mentioning the use of the "if it compiles, it works" phrase - this is clearly a meme, and often used as a joke, but is also used as a goal for writing reliable software: if we can encode enough of our problem domain into the type system, then we can be much more certain that if we write programs which compile, they likely do what we want them to. If it not a synonym for "If it compiles, it has no bugs and is perfect", which is how you seem to be interpreting it.

lpw25 11y ago

Just a quick note to say that jdh hasn't been an active OCaml user for years. He trolls on behalf of F# these days.

axman6 11y ago
He seems pretty active in comments in the linked discussion... BUt I'm pretty sure John also carries a list around with him of reasons why he doesn't like Haskell, just in case he needs it. Truly unpleasant.

pekk 11y ago

On the other hand (without commenting on specifics of Haskell) the parts do represent the whole. People in a community learn tropes from each other. If many of the community's tropes are toxic, the community is toxic in a way that survives the departure of individuals because those individuals really weren't that special.

axman6 11y ago
My experience with the Haskell community over the last 8 years has been so far from toxic than I'm not sure where that idea could even come from.