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Your list should include Standard Chartered and Barclays. Standard Chartered probably has the largest commercial Haskell codebase in the world, it has over 30 f

Your list should include Standard Chartered and Barclays. Standard Chartered probably has the largest commercial Haskell codebase in the world, it has over 30 full-time Haskell developers and many more users.

megaman22 9y ago
30 developers is either sad, or really sad. Unfortunately, if software is going to wind up restricted to specialized druids adhering to Haskell, I'm not sure that is a good thing
- tome 9y ago
  Why would it be sad? There are 30 Haskell developers at SCB, 0 Ruby developers and probably 100s of Excel developers. I don't see why one of these facts should make you sad (or happy) and not the others.
  - 59nadir 9y ago
    His point is obviously that they should hire more to make Haskell seem popular, even though one of the reasons they don't need more than 30 is because it's Haskell and not JavaScript.
    - throwaway7645 9y ago
      Or OP's point was the largest company using Haskell only employs 30 Haskell devs. A Haskell proponent will say exactly, you only need a few developers with Haskell, while someone suspicious will say if this tech were truly great more people would use it
      - przemo_li 9y ago
        Your comment make no sense what so ever. Number of haskellers in some particular company (despite your attempt at labeling it as "largest" without providing any evidence), do not prove or disprove quality of haskell. Number of developers implying perfection of language is also easily disproved. PHP or JS are good examples, where original languages become popular because of other factors. Also, original poster was trying to sell us single data point as measure of popularity O_O Getting good quantitative informations about languages is hard. But claiming that X devs hired in some company implies poor quality but X+10 would imply good quality is just ridiculous.
        throwaway7645 9y ago
        I disagree. Vanilla Ice song, Titanic song (my heart will go on), and Hansen Mmmbop might make you cringe, but people went nuts over those songs for a reason. At the time they were amazing. Php might not be the world's greatest language, but at the time it had what people needed in the way they needed it (easy to build websites). Haskell may be objectively better than Php from a language design standpoint, but there is still a LOT that keeps your average Joe/Jane developer from really learning the language (which string library to use as the seemingly default one is really slow, bad IDE support, unpredictable performance due to laziness, monads...etc). You can tell me Haskell is great all day and on paper I would agree, but due to the simple fact that in reality nobody is using it in production or hiring for it (yes some outliers exist), that tells the average person all they need to know. Where is Haskell on tiobe (yes not a perfect source I'm aware, but good enough)? I don't think it even shows up in the top 50 languages. That means drastically reduced employability to many people. I'm definitely not bashing Haskell btw. I think it's great, but I could also understand a lot of people shying away for good reason.
- willtim 9y ago
  IMHO, sad is when you have large numbers of people hacking on a multi-million line codebase in Python with no static types, unfortunately a far more common situation in finance!
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Druids? Anyone who can learn language X, Y or Z can learn Haskell. There is even a book written to make it easier to learn. I think what makes Haskell harder is that when you go to work, everyone is using Java, Python etc. Just like it is harder to learn Arabic than English if you live in an English speaking country. Not sure how this can be addressed, or if it needs to be.
danpalmer 9y ago
They call it a Haskell codebase, but as far as I understand it's their own fork of Haskell 98, that is strict not lazy, with quite a few modifications. That might have the same appeal for some, but as much as I like Haskell, that sounds like an ancient legacy enterprise monolith to me.
- swyx 9y ago
  hello! i worked there for 2 years. yes it is a fork called Mu, no it is not not lazy. The Mu Core team are devout Haskellers so don't be too quick to dismiss them as abandoning Haskell's core values.
  - danpalmer 9y ago
    Thanks for the clarification! I never thought they were not devout Haskellers, but I do always wonder about projects that fork a more standard thing for internal use ending up as poorly maintained legacy software.
    - tome 9y ago
      They didn't fork GHC. They wrote a new Haskell compiler to target a pre-existing runtime that existed inside the bank. For various reasons related to the runtime that meant the language had to be strict. Mu's creation was, in fact, a step away from legacy.
- willtim 9y ago
  There is plenty of GHC Haskell in the codebase. It's very common for banks to have proprietary in-house scripting languages. Mu, is at least based on a language standard and is not some ad-hoc design. The codebases of Facebook and Google would be no less "ancient legacy enterprise monolith".
  - danpalmer 9y ago
    > It's very common for banks to have proprietary in-house scripting languages Yeah I don't really understand this. From what I've heard, Goldman Sachs for example, have systems written in a language that no one outside of GS has used, was kinda clever in the early 90s, but hasn't really evolved since and therefore is difficult to get expertise in, and that developers working with it struggle with moving to other companies as their skills are somewhat less transferable. Edit: at least Facebook and Google open source their internal languages/tools (Go, React, etc) so that those skills become somewhat more transferable.
swyx 9y ago
hello! i had the honor of working with them from 2014-2016. top guys like Lennart Augustsson (sp?) and Neil Mitchell. Happy to answer any questions.

megaman22 9y ago

30 developers is either sad, or really sad. Unfortunately, if software is going to wind up restricted to specialized druids adhering to Haskell, I'm not sure that is a good thing

tome 9y ago
Why would it be sad? There are 30 Haskell developers at SCB, 0 Ruby developers and probably 100s of Excel developers. I don't see why one of these facts should make you sad (or happy) and not the others.
- 59nadir 9y ago
  His point is obviously that they should hire more to make Haskell seem popular, even though one of the reasons they don't need more than 30 is because it's Haskell and not JavaScript.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Or OP's point was the largest company using Haskell only employs 30 Haskell devs. A Haskell proponent will say exactly, you only need a few developers with Haskell, while someone suspicious will say if this tech were truly great more people would use it
    - przemo_li 9y ago
      Your comment make no sense what so ever. Number of haskellers in some particular company (despite your attempt at labeling it as "largest" without providing any evidence), do not prove or disprove quality of haskell. Number of developers implying perfection of language is also easily disproved. PHP or JS are good examples, where original languages become popular because of other factors. Also, original poster was trying to sell us single data point as measure of popularity O_O Getting good quantitative informations about languages is hard. But claiming that X devs hired in some company implies poor quality but X+10 would imply good quality is just ridiculous.
      - throwaway7645 9y ago
        I disagree. Vanilla Ice song, Titanic song (my heart will go on), and Hansen Mmmbop might make you cringe, but people went nuts over those songs for a reason. At the time they were amazing. Php might not be the world's greatest language, but at the time it had what people needed in the way they needed it (easy to build websites). Haskell may be objectively better than Php from a language design standpoint, but there is still a LOT that keeps your average Joe/Jane developer from really learning the language (which string library to use as the seemingly default one is really slow, bad IDE support, unpredictable performance due to laziness, monads...etc). You can tell me Haskell is great all day and on paper I would agree, but due to the simple fact that in reality nobody is using it in production or hiring for it (yes some outliers exist), that tells the average person all they need to know. Where is Haskell on tiobe (yes not a perfect source I'm aware, but good enough)? I don't think it even shows up in the top 50 languages. That means drastically reduced employability to many people. I'm definitely not bashing Haskell btw. I think it's great, but I could also understand a lot of people shying away for good reason.
willtim 9y ago
IMHO, sad is when you have large numbers of people hacking on a multi-million line codebase in Python with no static types, unfortunately a far more common situation in finance!
quickthrower2 9y ago
Druids? Anyone who can learn language X, Y or Z can learn Haskell. There is even a book written to make it easier to learn. I think what makes Haskell harder is that when you go to work, everyone is using Java, Python etc. Just like it is harder to learn Arabic than English if you live in an English speaking country. Not sure how this can be addressed, or if it needs to be.

danpalmer 9y ago

They call it a Haskell codebase, but as far as I understand it's their own fork of Haskell 98, that is strict not lazy, with quite a few modifications. That might have the same appeal for some, but as much as I like Haskell, that sounds like an ancient legacy enterprise monolith to me.

swyx 9y ago
hello! i worked there for 2 years. yes it is a fork called Mu, no it is not not lazy. The Mu Core team are devout Haskellers so don't be too quick to dismiss them as abandoning Haskell's core values.
- danpalmer 9y ago
  Thanks for the clarification! I never thought they were not devout Haskellers, but I do always wonder about projects that fork a more standard thing for internal use ending up as poorly maintained legacy software.
  - tome 9y ago
    They didn't fork GHC. They wrote a new Haskell compiler to target a pre-existing runtime that existed inside the bank. For various reasons related to the runtime that meant the language had to be strict. Mu's creation was, in fact, a step away from legacy.
willtim 9y ago
There is plenty of GHC Haskell in the codebase. It's very common for banks to have proprietary in-house scripting languages. Mu, is at least based on a language standard and is not some ad-hoc design. The codebases of Facebook and Google would be no less "ancient legacy enterprise monolith".
- danpalmer 9y ago
  > It's very common for banks to have proprietary in-house scripting languages Yeah I don't really understand this. From what I've heard, Goldman Sachs for example, have systems written in a language that no one outside of GS has used, was kinda clever in the early 90s, but hasn't really evolved since and therefore is difficult to get expertise in, and that developers working with it struggle with moving to other companies as their skills are somewhat less transferable. Edit: at least Facebook and Google open source their internal languages/tools (Go, React, etc) so that those skills become somewhat more transferable.

swyx 9y ago

hello! i had the honor of working with them from 2014-2016. top guys like Lennart Augustsson (sp?) and Neil Mitchell. Happy to answer any questions.