7 ms·

What articles are you talking about? This couldn't be further from the truth. Go is a practical language meant to be used in production settings. It's not a has

What articles are you talking about? This couldn't be further from the truth. Go is a practical language meant to be used in production settings. It's not a haskell. For example, it's support for protocol buffers is second to none imo.

chowells 9y ago
Err. Why do you think Haskell isn't intended to be used in production settings?
- skybrian 9y ago
  The slogan "avoid success at all costs" suggests that they don't want a lot of production usage, at least.
  - lclarkmichalek 9y ago
    It's "avoid 'success at all costs'", which has _quite_ the different meaning. Although, if the slogan has too high of a barrier to entry, I don't know what you'd think of the language itself.
  - mrkgnao 9y ago
    No, it's meant as a warning against the trappings of explosive popularity. A language like C++/Java/JS is difficult to modify because of how entrenched the usage of the language becomes. In that sense avoiding "success at all costs" (which is how it should be parsed) allows "agile" development of the language.
- nvarsj 9y ago
  Well, it wasn't. Haskell was designed primarily as a test bed for writing language features to support PhD theses. The great success of Haskell is the amount of new language ideas it generated, which we now see in many other places.
  - chowells 9y ago
    Being a real-world language was absolutely one of the design goals of Haskell. See point 1 of section 2.4 in "A History of Haskell: Being Lazy With Class"[1]. It succeeded at being suitable for writing large systems, too. It's easily the least-bad language I've used for writing software where garbage collection is acceptable. It hits a sweet spot between expressiveness, maintainability, and performance that I haven't experienced from any other language. Question: Have you used Haskell to write real software? I find that people who have used it tend to have much more precise criticism than "isn't designed for writing real software". It certainly has lots to criticize, just like every other language. But most of the criticisms I see of it seem to have gone through 20 rounds of telephone, with basically no relation to the reality of using Haskell. [1] http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/history.pdf http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/histor...
    - kjksf 9y ago
      It says "It should be suitable for teaching, research, and applications, including building large systems." So building production software is stated as 3rd most important goal. In contrast, here's Rob Pike's talk about Go: https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article The title: "Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering" It puts building production software as the first most important goal. It then goes in depth about how design decisions were driven by things the authors learned from Google's vast experience of writing production software. It methodically describes pain points of large-scale software production and how Go's design decisions are trying to address those pain points. Unlike Haskell, Go wasn't designed for teaching. It wasn't designed for research. Go was designed for writing production software that needs to be reliable.
      - wtetzner 9y ago
        > So building production software is stated as 3rd most important goal. Nowhere in that sentence do they claim the list is ordered by importance. > Go was designed for writing production software that needs to be reliable. That might be true, but it doesn't actually say anything about how successful they were in reaching that goal.
mhh__ 9y ago
Haskell is probably the worst teaching language I can think of (Of the set of languages that are considered good/production worthy)
- kmicklas 9y ago
  That's only if you're used to imperative languages. Of course even in functional land a slimmed down language like Scheme is probably better for teaching.
- leshow 9y ago
  Uh, what? Learning Haskell covers a huge surface area, many things you learn are applicable to tons of other languages. How does that make it a poor teaching language?
  - mhh__ 9y ago
    I'm interpreting "Teaching language" to be the first language students learn. How can one explain the need for monadic IO properly without explaining how regular printf and the like work. Also, Haskell is quite scary to the beginner (Although I personally find it much simpler/more consistent than the Java and C++) If it's (say) the third language they learn, then Haskell is absolutely perfect for the exact reason/s you have stated. Personally, I actually learnt Haskell by accident (Read SPJ's book about lazy functional language implementation, realized SPJ started Haskell then learnt more from there).
    - wtetzner 9y ago
      > Also, Haskell is quite scary to the beginner (Although I personally find it much simpler/more consistent than the Java and C++) Is it? Or is it just harder for people who have already learned a mainstream programming language?
- dmit 9y ago
  I've heard from multiple people teaching Haskell that it's much easier to grasp for people with no prior programming experience compared to those with one or more languages under their belt. It makes sense on some level - core Haskell is about taking plain data and transforming it into something else. Much easier to explain than public static enterprise beans. I think that learning Java/Python/JavaScript/C#/PHP as a first language burdens you with too much baggage, while a lot of what Haskell teaches can be successfully applied regardless of what language you end up working with. It's truly unfortunate that Haskell got the reputation of being mainly about monoids in the category of endofunctors, and zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms. The core principles are simple, solid, and lend themselves well to writing production code.
kmicklas 9y ago
Haskell is much more suited to production use than Go though. Better concurrency, more invariants checked at compile time, easier to refactor, etc.
- mjibson 9y ago
  I think the people who make and use Go have had a different experience than you, and judge a language to be suited to production with different criteria. Simplicity, great concurrency (that is, way better than most others even if not the best), speed of compiling, static binary, garbage collection.
  - leshow 9y ago
    I'm not OP, and I don't necessarily agree, but Haskell can produce static binaries, has GC, and has a great story for concurrency. It uses a M:N threading model similar to Go.
    - whateveracct 9y ago
      Re: concurrency, Haskell also has STM which is absolutely amazing compared to anything Go has.
    - computerex 9y ago
      No one said Haskell cannot be used in production. It is inherently a pedagogical language, that anyone must concede simply because history: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_research https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_research Languages like Go or Nodejs are inherently more production ready and easier to deploy and maintain in production because of their vast ecosystems.
      - jolux 9y ago
        >because of their vast ecosystems. But this is an argument more about community than about language design. Granted there are a lot of problems with the Haskell community but deifying poor design decisions as "simplicity" is generally not one of them. For the horror that is string types, though, maybe.
artursapek 9y ago
That's natural since protobuf is also developed by Google

chowells 9y ago

Err. Why do you think Haskell isn't intended to be used in production settings?

skybrian 9y ago
The slogan "avoid success at all costs" suggests that they don't want a lot of production usage, at least.
- lclarkmichalek 9y ago
  It's "avoid 'success at all costs'", which has _quite_ the different meaning. Although, if the slogan has too high of a barrier to entry, I don't know what you'd think of the language itself.
- mrkgnao 9y ago
  No, it's meant as a warning against the trappings of explosive popularity. A language like C++/Java/JS is difficult to modify because of how entrenched the usage of the language becomes. In that sense avoiding "success at all costs" (which is how it should be parsed) allows "agile" development of the language.
nvarsj 9y ago
Well, it wasn't. Haskell was designed primarily as a test bed for writing language features to support PhD theses. The great success of Haskell is the amount of new language ideas it generated, which we now see in many other places.
- chowells 9y ago
  Being a real-world language was absolutely one of the design goals of Haskell. See point 1 of section 2.4 in "A History of Haskell: Being Lazy With Class"[1]. It succeeded at being suitable for writing large systems, too. It's easily the least-bad language I've used for writing software where garbage collection is acceptable. It hits a sweet spot between expressiveness, maintainability, and performance that I haven't experienced from any other language. Question: Have you used Haskell to write real software? I find that people who have used it tend to have much more precise criticism than "isn't designed for writing real software". It certainly has lots to criticize, just like every other language. But most of the criticisms I see of it seem to have gone through 20 rounds of telephone, with basically no relation to the reality of using Haskell. [1] http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/history.pdf http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/histor...
  - kjksf 9y ago
    It says "It should be suitable for teaching, research, and applications, including building large systems." So building production software is stated as 3rd most important goal. In contrast, here's Rob Pike's talk about Go: https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article The title: "Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering" It puts building production software as the first most important goal. It then goes in depth about how design decisions were driven by things the authors learned from Google's vast experience of writing production software. It methodically describes pain points of large-scale software production and how Go's design decisions are trying to address those pain points. Unlike Haskell, Go wasn't designed for teaching. It wasn't designed for research. Go was designed for writing production software that needs to be reliable.
    - wtetzner 9y ago
      > So building production software is stated as 3rd most important goal. Nowhere in that sentence do they claim the list is ordered by importance. > Go was designed for writing production software that needs to be reliable. That might be true, but it doesn't actually say anything about how successful they were in reaching that goal.

mhh__ 9y ago

Haskell is probably the worst teaching language I can think of (Of the set of languages that are considered good/production worthy)

kmicklas 9y ago
That's only if you're used to imperative languages. Of course even in functional land a slimmed down language like Scheme is probably better for teaching.
leshow 9y ago
Uh, what? Learning Haskell covers a huge surface area, many things you learn are applicable to tons of other languages. How does that make it a poor teaching language?
- mhh__ 9y ago
  I'm interpreting "Teaching language" to be the first language students learn. How can one explain the need for monadic IO properly without explaining how regular printf and the like work. Also, Haskell is quite scary to the beginner (Although I personally find it much simpler/more consistent than the Java and C++) If it's (say) the third language they learn, then Haskell is absolutely perfect for the exact reason/s you have stated. Personally, I actually learnt Haskell by accident (Read SPJ's book about lazy functional language implementation, realized SPJ started Haskell then learnt more from there).
  - wtetzner 9y ago
    > Also, Haskell is quite scary to the beginner (Although I personally find it much simpler/more consistent than the Java and C++) Is it? Or is it just harder for people who have already learned a mainstream programming language?
dmit 9y ago
I've heard from multiple people teaching Haskell that it's much easier to grasp for people with no prior programming experience compared to those with one or more languages under their belt. It makes sense on some level - core Haskell is about taking plain data and transforming it into something else. Much easier to explain than public static enterprise beans. I think that learning Java/Python/JavaScript/C#/PHP as a first language burdens you with too much baggage, while a lot of what Haskell teaches can be successfully applied regardless of what language you end up working with. It's truly unfortunate that Haskell got the reputation of being mainly about monoids in the category of endofunctors, and zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms. The core principles are simple, solid, and lend themselves well to writing production code.

kmicklas 9y ago

Haskell is much more suited to production use than Go though. Better concurrency, more invariants checked at compile time, easier to refactor, etc.

mjibson 9y ago
I think the people who make and use Go have had a different experience than you, and judge a language to be suited to production with different criteria. Simplicity, great concurrency (that is, way better than most others even if not the best), speed of compiling, static binary, garbage collection.
- leshow 9y ago
  I'm not OP, and I don't necessarily agree, but Haskell can produce static binaries, has GC, and has a great story for concurrency. It uses a M:N threading model similar to Go.
  - whateveracct 9y ago
    Re: concurrency, Haskell also has STM which is absolutely amazing compared to anything Go has.
  - computerex 9y ago
    No one said Haskell cannot be used in production. It is inherently a pedagogical language, that anyone must concede simply because history: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_research https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_research Languages like Go or Nodejs are inherently more production ready and easier to deploy and maintain in production because of their vast ecosystems.
    - jolux 9y ago
      >because of their vast ecosystems. But this is an argument more about community than about language design. Granted there are a lot of problems with the Haskell community but deifying poor design decisions as "simplicity" is generally not one of them. For the horror that is string types, though, maybe.

artursapek 9y ago

That's natural since protobuf is also developed by Google