4 ms·

If you look at software at various scales, Haskell does a lot to get the finely grained and maybe even medium grained parts right and correct. Yet, I don't see

If you look at software at various scales, Haskell does a lot to get the finely grained and maybe even medium grained parts right and correct. Yet, I don't see a convincing value proposition for Haskell for the coarser grained scales. On that level, the benefits of Haskell as a language dont shine anymore as brightly, and this is an area that many teams struggle with. And oh: Haskell's lazy evaluation is the reason why I wouldn't like to use it within the business context, introducing all kinds of weirdness I don't want to have in a business context.

diegoperini 8y ago
> ...introducing all kinds of weirdness I don't want to have in a business context. Despite being a Haskell worshiper, I strongly agree with this.
- wirrbel 8y ago
  I consider myself to be a haskell fan (a 95 percenter, as I am not so happy with a few aspects, while being overall really positive about it). Unfortunately, the Haskell community is quite hostile to everyone not in line 100%.
  - tome 8y ago
    > Unfortunately, the Haskell community is quite hostile to everyone not in line 100%. Could you say a bit more about what you mean? This discussion is one of the highest voted threads ever on Haskell Reddit and suggests that many prominent Haskellers are not shy about offering criticism of the language: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4f47ou/why_does_haskell_in_your_opinion_suck/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4f47ou/why_does_ha...
    - wirrbel 8y ago
      Of course my statement is a statement of a subjective perception (I don't conduct empirical studies on this), also you'll find criticism and discussions about stuff in the Haskell community (which is fairly large). However, my impression in other language communities, even in those, that are tightly-knit and feature a certain "cult of pride" (such as Python) I think flaws and shortcomings are discussed much more openly. Part of the problem is, that (some) Haskellers are pretty quick to insinuate that the person complaining or asking "provocative" questions does not understand and should educate themself more. I remember being rudely shut down when suggesting that Haskell docs could benefit a lot from a few introductory examples here and there (because the type signatures tell it all, you know!) It doesn't help that some Haskell enthusiast seem to be allergic against mentioning of certain words by the uninitiated. I think Matthew Rocklin (cool guy, admirable programmer, definitely with a mathematical education) once blogged and mentioned the word monad as an example for code with unnecessary abstraction/complexity IIRC. I read some nasty twitter remarks from people who were not capable of extracting the context and the intent from the surrounding text. I think the cabal/stack schism has brought at least some change into the community and I see improvements. Until there are some massive improvements, I respectfully decline to actively participate in that community and restrict myself to occasionally consume Haskell material to educate myself.
vapourismo 8y ago
You'd be surprise how much weirder it gets when everything is evaluated eagerly.
- Silhouette 8y ago
  I disagree. If everything is evaluated eagerly, intuition usually works. Failing that, tools like logging and debugging and profiling will usually bridge the gap. A non-strict language like Haskell makes it much more difficult to predict run-time performance characteristics, unless you introduce overrides all over the place to force everything to be strict anyway.
  - wirrbel 8y ago
    exactly my experience. I personally find lazy evaluation a neat idea in principle. In practice, it introduces problems I never had in - let's say - java. One primary problem is that errors become delocalized in the code base. In a strictly evaluating language, the stack trace gives me a pretty accurate idea when and where an error is occuring. In lazy languages, it can happen when you don't expect it. There is some irony in the fact, that a well-received tool for working with haskell code bases (intero) has bugs (space leaks iirc) that just cannot be tracked down properly.

diegoperini 8y ago

> ...introducing all kinds of weirdness I don't want to have in a business context. Despite being a Haskell worshiper, I strongly agree with this.

wirrbel 8y ago
I consider myself to be a haskell fan (a 95 percenter, as I am not so happy with a few aspects, while being overall really positive about it). Unfortunately, the Haskell community is quite hostile to everyone not in line 100%.
- tome 8y ago
  > Unfortunately, the Haskell community is quite hostile to everyone not in line 100%. Could you say a bit more about what you mean? This discussion is one of the highest voted threads ever on Haskell Reddit and suggests that many prominent Haskellers are not shy about offering criticism of the language: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4f47ou/why_does_haskell_in_your_opinion_suck/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4f47ou/why_does_ha...
  - wirrbel 8y ago
    Of course my statement is a statement of a subjective perception (I don't conduct empirical studies on this), also you'll find criticism and discussions about stuff in the Haskell community (which is fairly large). However, my impression in other language communities, even in those, that are tightly-knit and feature a certain "cult of pride" (such as Python) I think flaws and shortcomings are discussed much more openly. Part of the problem is, that (some) Haskellers are pretty quick to insinuate that the person complaining or asking "provocative" questions does not understand and should educate themself more. I remember being rudely shut down when suggesting that Haskell docs could benefit a lot from a few introductory examples here and there (because the type signatures tell it all, you know!) It doesn't help that some Haskell enthusiast seem to be allergic against mentioning of certain words by the uninitiated. I think Matthew Rocklin (cool guy, admirable programmer, definitely with a mathematical education) once blogged and mentioned the word monad as an example for code with unnecessary abstraction/complexity IIRC. I read some nasty twitter remarks from people who were not capable of extracting the context and the intent from the surrounding text. I think the cabal/stack schism has brought at least some change into the community and I see improvements. Until there are some massive improvements, I respectfully decline to actively participate in that community and restrict myself to occasionally consume Haskell material to educate myself.

vapourismo 8y ago

You'd be surprise how much weirder it gets when everything is evaluated eagerly.

Silhouette 8y ago
I disagree. If everything is evaluated eagerly, intuition usually works. Failing that, tools like logging and debugging and profiling will usually bridge the gap. A non-strict language like Haskell makes it much more difficult to predict run-time performance characteristics, unless you introduce overrides all over the place to force everything to be strict anyway.
- wirrbel 8y ago
  exactly my experience. I personally find lazy evaluation a neat idea in principle. In practice, it introduces problems I never had in - let's say - java. One primary problem is that errors become delocalized in the code base. In a strictly evaluating language, the stack trace gives me a pretty accurate idea when and where an error is occuring. In lazy languages, it can happen when you don't expect it. There is some irony in the fact, that a well-received tool for working with haskell code bases (intero) has bugs (space leaks iirc) that just cannot be tracked down properly.