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You appear to be misrepresenting the blog post. His example of an aesthetically motivated language is Python, not Haskell. Haskell's design was not motivated by

by willtim 10y ago

You appear to be misrepresenting the blog post. His example of an aesthetically motivated language is Python, not Haskell. Haskell's design was not motivated by aesthetics or superficial ease-of-use, which could well be its downfall. Haskell was and still is motivated by enabling software development gains, e.g. abstraction, composition, concurrency. You may disagree that it has achieved these goals, but to that I would say don't knock it until you have tried it.

pron 10y ago
> Haskell was and still is motivated by enabling software development gains The same can be said about nearly every language. Haskell is first and foremost a research language motivated by answering a research questions, which is what it is like to program using a certain mathematical formalism that is aesthetically appealing to some. Its designers didn't set out to find the best abstractions etc., but to test the validity of a specific theoretical approach. > but to that I would say don't knock it until you have tried it. I'm not knocking it. I'm saying that given how expensive it is to try, perhaps some actual information rather than marketing would do a better job in persuading people to use it. Saying that I'm not persuaded by virtually zero information is no knocking anything, except perhaps the advocacy effort.
- willtim 10y ago
  >> Haskell was and still is motivated by enabling software development gains > The same can be said about nearly every language. This clearly isn't true. For example many languages optimise for ease of use, shallow learning curve, programming in the small etc. Some optimise for efficiency and runtime determinism. Features like type-systems are great for software development (programming in the large), but do negatively impact ease-of-use. > Haskell is first and foremost a research language motivated by answering a research questions This isn't true. The Haskell committee contains many people from industry. Haskell just happens to have come from academia and is still heavily used in academia. > Saying that I'm not persuaded by virtually zero information is no knocking anything That's a huge exaggeration to suggest there is zero information. There are many experience reports published all the time at conferences and in academic journals, going back decades. None however will give you the quantitative metrics you seem to be asking for, because it is almost impossible to do such a comparison.
  - pron 10y ago
    Nobody knows if Haskell's design is great for software development, and if it is, by how much and whether it justifies the costs. That's precisely why we need data. > Haskell just happens to have come from academia and is still heavily used in academia. Haskell isn't heavily used in academia at all. My guess is that most CS professors -- like most developers -- have hardly even heard of it, let alone used it. It is heavily used among researchers who's job it is to study the design of languages like Haskell. Languages that are heavily used in academia are C, Python, Java and maybe a few more. > There are many experience reports published all the time at conferences and in academic journals, Where? I've looked. If you want to see what a good report looks like, take a look at this one[1]. It's got some background, and then lot's of analysis of pros and cons, with plenty of numbers. I found it so convincing that I tried the language it advocated, and ended up adopting it. I'd seen similar (even more comprehensive) reports for Java back in the early '00s before deciding our team should adopt it. I haven't seen anything similar for Haskell. And again -- the more costly the adoption, the more information required before trying. > going back decades. None however will give you the quantitative metrics you seem to be asking for, because it is almost impossible to do such a comparison. I don't want a comparison, and what I'm asking for has been done at some point for nearly every language that has gained widespread adoption. I just want to know how much time and effort has gone into a single project, a breakdown of costs, and a subjective analysis of pros and cons. You see such reports being written from time to time about other languages (although usually with far more adoption than Haskell). [1]: Slides: http://tla2012.loria.fr/contributed/newcombe-slides.pdf http://tla2012.loria.fr/contributed/newcombe-slides.pdf Report 1: http://glat.info/pdf/formal-methods-amazon-2014-11.pdf http://glat.info/pdf/formal-methods-amazon-2014-11.pdf Report 2: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-43652-3_3 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-43652-3_3
    - willtim 10y ago
      > Nobody knows if Haskell's design is great for software development We can certainly say that uncontrolled side-effects, manual memory-management and dynamic types is bad for software development in the large. I'll stop here because I don't which to argue the semantics of what does are does not constitute significant use or significant research.

by willtim 10y ago

pron 10y ago

> Haskell was and still is motivated by enabling software development gains The same can be said about nearly every language. Haskell is first and foremost a research language motivated by answering a research questions, which is what it is like to program using a certain mathematical formalism that is aesthetically appealing to some. Its designers didn't set out to find the best abstractions etc., but to test the validity of a specific theoretical approach. > but to that I would say don't knock it until you have tried it. I'm not knocking it. I'm saying that given how expensive it is to try, perhaps some actual information rather than marketing would do a better job in persuading people to use it. Saying that I'm not persuaded by virtually zero information is no knocking anything, except perhaps the advocacy effort.

willtim 10y ago
>> Haskell was and still is motivated by enabling software development gains > The same can be said about nearly every language. This clearly isn't true. For example many languages optimise for ease of use, shallow learning curve, programming in the small etc. Some optimise for efficiency and runtime determinism. Features like type-systems are great for software development (programming in the large), but do negatively impact ease-of-use. > Haskell is first and foremost a research language motivated by answering a research questions This isn't true. The Haskell committee contains many people from industry. Haskell just happens to have come from academia and is still heavily used in academia. > Saying that I'm not persuaded by virtually zero information is no knocking anything That's a huge exaggeration to suggest there is zero information. There are many experience reports published all the time at conferences and in academic journals, going back decades. None however will give you the quantitative metrics you seem to be asking for, because it is almost impossible to do such a comparison.
- pron 10y ago
  Nobody knows if Haskell's design is great for software development, and if it is, by how much and whether it justifies the costs. That's precisely why we need data. > Haskell just happens to have come from academia and is still heavily used in academia. Haskell isn't heavily used in academia at all. My guess is that most CS professors -- like most developers -- have hardly even heard of it, let alone used it. It is heavily used among researchers who's job it is to study the design of languages like Haskell. Languages that are heavily used in academia are C, Python, Java and maybe a few more. > There are many experience reports published all the time at conferences and in academic journals, Where? I've looked. If you want to see what a good report looks like, take a look at this one[1]. It's got some background, and then lot's of analysis of pros and cons, with plenty of numbers. I found it so convincing that I tried the language it advocated, and ended up adopting it. I'd seen similar (even more comprehensive) reports for Java back in the early '00s before deciding our team should adopt it. I haven't seen anything similar for Haskell. And again -- the more costly the adoption, the more information required before trying. > going back decades. None however will give you the quantitative metrics you seem to be asking for, because it is almost impossible to do such a comparison. I don't want a comparison, and what I'm asking for has been done at some point for nearly every language that has gained widespread adoption. I just want to know how much time and effort has gone into a single project, a breakdown of costs, and a subjective analysis of pros and cons. You see such reports being written from time to time about other languages (although usually with far more adoption than Haskell). [1]: Slides: http://tla2012.loria.fr/contributed/newcombe-slides.pdf http://tla2012.loria.fr/contributed/newcombe-slides.pdf Report 1: http://glat.info/pdf/formal-methods-amazon-2014-11.pdf http://glat.info/pdf/formal-methods-amazon-2014-11.pdf Report 2: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-43652-3_3 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-43652-3_3
  - willtim 10y ago
    > Nobody knows if Haskell's design is great for software development We can certainly say that uncontrolled side-effects, manual memory-management and dynamic types is bad for software development in the large. I'll stop here because I don't which to argue the semantics of what does are does not constitute significant use or significant research.