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I admire the Haskell folks, much in the way I admire theoretical mathematicians... which is to say, I'm sure the work they are doing/did has some value, somewhe

by blunte 10y ago

I admire the Haskell folks, much in the way I admire theoretical mathematicians... which is to say, I'm sure the work they are doing/did has some value, somewhere (in the past). But the Haskell proponents that I have known have admitted that the reason they don't use Haskell more is because the libraries and ecosystem aren't adequate. That's not to mention that maybe Haskell is just too much for even the above average dev to grok. So why push deeper? Is this just academia stroking itself? Why not invest this energy in something slightly more commercial?

sjakobi 10y ago
> […] the reason they don't use Haskell more is because the libraries and ecosystem aren't adequate. The adequacy of the Haskell ecosystem really varies depending on the kind of application that you want to develop. If you're writing a compiler or a web service, Haskell is a pretty good choice. This [1] is a nice overview of the state of the Haskell ecosystem. Let me also plug two more links [2] [3] that explain why Haskell is actually a very good choice for (large) commercial projects. [1] https://github.com/Gabriel439/post-rfc/blob/master/sotu.md https://github.com/Gabriel439/post-rfc/blob/master/sotu.md [2] https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/12/software-project-maintenance-is-where-haskell-shines https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/12/software-project-mai... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/54umkh/haskell_for_large_codebases_looking_for_first/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/54umkh/haskell_for...
dualogy 10y ago
As I dove into the Haskell space, I noticed where all the major "innovations" I encountered (as game-changing and substantially productivity/expressiveness/deeper-understanding-enhancing for the developer) in the mainstream tech stacks (whether .net java python ruby rust jquery coffeescript node or the more recent hypes) in the last decade were really discovered/pioneered/refined/formulated/scrutinized/formalized. It's definitely the most interesting and educating ecosystem I have discovered to play around and evolve my breath and depth of developer skills in since I basically wrote my first lines of code in Basic and Pascal long ago. Just when I got fed up with the boilerplate staleness of it all, I found the actual frontier. Good enough for me, some hackers are kept going by figuring out where currently their old "endless fascination with brainy stuff but also immediately interactively attackable with a REPL" nerve will be well tickled for the next n years. So yes "why push deeper"? It's just what some developers feel they need to do in order not to just throw out their laptops and turn to full-time gardening, full-time redditting/4chaning/twittering, or cooking shows. Not that there's anything wrong with any of these..
- blunte 10y ago
  I really appreciate this comment. I hope that at some point I see the balanced outcome of such approaches to technology. I'm so close the the "throwing out the laptop" scenario you describe.
dllthomas 10y ago
> So why push deeper? This would appear, contrarily, to be shallower.

by blunte 10y ago

sjakobi 10y ago

> […] the reason they don't use Haskell more is because the libraries and ecosystem aren't adequate. The adequacy of the Haskell ecosystem really varies depending on the kind of application that you want to develop. If you're writing a compiler or a web service, Haskell is a pretty good choice. This [1] is a nice overview of the state of the Haskell ecosystem. Let me also plug two more links [2] [3] that explain why Haskell is actually a very good choice for (large) commercial projects. [1] https://github.com/Gabriel439/post-rfc/blob/master/sotu.md https://github.com/Gabriel439/post-rfc/blob/master/sotu.md [2] https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/12/software-project-maintenance-is-where-haskell-shines https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/12/software-project-mai... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/54umkh/haskell_for_large_codebases_looking_for_first/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/54umkh/haskell_for...

dualogy 10y ago

As I dove into the Haskell space, I noticed where all the major "innovations" I encountered (as game-changing and substantially productivity/expressiveness/deeper-understanding-enhancing for the developer) in the mainstream tech stacks (whether .net java python ruby rust jquery coffeescript node or the more recent hypes) in the last decade were really discovered/pioneered/refined/formulated/scrutinized/formalized. It's definitely the most interesting and educating ecosystem I have discovered to play around and evolve my breath and depth of developer skills in since I basically wrote my first lines of code in Basic and Pascal long ago. Just when I got fed up with the boilerplate staleness of it all, I found the actual frontier. Good enough for me, some hackers are kept going by figuring out where currently their old "endless fascination with brainy stuff but also immediately interactively attackable with a REPL" nerve will be well tickled for the next n years. So yes "why push deeper"? It's just what some developers feel they need to do in order not to just throw out their laptops and turn to full-time gardening, full-time redditting/4chaning/twittering, or cooking shows. Not that there's anything wrong with any of these..

blunte 10y ago
I really appreciate this comment. I hope that at some point I see the balanced outcome of such approaches to technology. I'm so close the the "throwing out the laptop" scenario you describe.

dllthomas 10y ago

> So why push deeper? This would appear, contrarily, to be shallower.