5 ms·

Exactly. I find it revealing that having some moderately visible successful software does not feature on this list. Even ocaml does, IMO, better here (bits of m

by patrec 7y ago

Exactly. I find it revealing that having some moderately visible successful software does not feature on this list. Even ocaml does, IMO, better here (bits of mirageOs for non-linux docker; Xen; unison, coq, at least one successful ocaml only company) vs what, pandoc and shellCheck?

agumonkey 7y ago
Success story are borderline stupid. Some companies are using haskell for non trivial needs, they just dont talk much about it.
- kbumsik 7y ago
  > Some companies are using haskell for non trivial needs, they just dont talk much about it. Sorry but doesn't this statement fit better to the definition of "borderline" something?
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Apologies if my comment felt offending. I've just seen a few stories about companies using non mainstream tools for important matter without making a product out of it. Caring only about known programs made in <lang> is shallow IMO
    - pron 7y ago
      If a language is used at a company and its use is not spreading rapidly within that company (as has happened with Fortran and C and Java/Python) you do ask yourself, is the language actually serving a business purpose, or is the business serving a "language purpose" by giving some fans their entertainment? I can't think of a worse signal for a language's value, or perhaps the size of its useful domain, than it being used for years at a company without spreading.
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        Mild point, there's no way a single language would suddenly progress through all layers no matter what its qualities. I understand your question though, it's highly possible that the devs picked haskell for their own interest. But so far it's been a few years and the haskell "module" is dealing with the core of their business.
        pron 7y ago
        > there's no way a single language would suddenly progress through all layers no matter what its qualities. Except that's exactly what languages that provide a business value do (like the ones I mentioned). Maybe not always in all layers, but they tend to fill a big, wide niche at a company very quickly.
    - patrec 7y ago
      Well, to my mind the fact that Haskell has a large amount of mind share in academia and smart programmers, has been around for decades and there is very little to show for it[*] that I'm aware off makes me think it almost certainly has negative average utility for developing useful software. Why would you think otherwise? I'm not saying it will necessarily have negative utility for your particular problem, or that the negative utility it has might not be a cost worth swallowing in order to hire some really smart programmers who happen to like it.
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        You could argue the opposite too. How many pure fp things from academia managed to even survive out of the publication phase ? I'm not that pro-haskell but I also see how all languages in the last decade shifted toward fp idioms clearly. I mean redux is a fold.
        patrec 7y ago
        I don't understand your argument, in that I really can't see how one can equally argue the opposite. I fully acknowledge that Haskell has been successful as a test bed for PL research, and I also think Haskell is an interesting language worth studying. It is also true that FP ideas have increasingly bled into mainstream languages over the past two decades. But that does in no way imply that Haskell is in any way a good general choice for writing useful software. And although a lot of practically useful stuff has come out of Haskell-land (property based testing, for example), it's not even obvious to me that Haskell has been a huge part of the shift to more FP-y idioms (compared, to say, scheme or SML). Your own example, fold, has been around decades before Haskell.
        agumonkey 7y ago
        What can I say, I didn't read why es6, php or cpp lifted closures into the language. I consider this is pure FP influence which haskell is the most known instance. And yeah scheme and sml were prior art, but sml is not even on the map of PL choices (I saw it mentionned in rust history, but I think it's mostly the eager semantics, otherwise you could replace it with any pure FP language)
exdsq 7y ago
IOHK (iohk.io) and Galois (galois.com) both use Haskell. Edit: I forgot about consultancies like Well-Typed and Tweag
- pron 7y ago
  Both are research companies.
  - exdsq 7y ago
    IOHK has a research arm but does build products, Galois is almost entirely on the D side of R&D (from what I understand).
- kryptiskt 7y ago
  Two big names are Target and Standard Chartered. Another trend (that I don't particularly like) is all the blockchain startups using Haskell.
  - exdsq 7y ago
    Out of interest, why not? I'm slightly biased on this point.
    - kick 7y ago
      You must know how bad of a reputation cryptocurrencies have at this point, right? They aren't exactly loved, especially around these parts. Cardano (which I'm assuming is what IOHK works on) may be different, it might not be, but either way it has an uphill climb to be recognized as anything better than, well... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=cryptocurrencies%20destroy%20env&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=cryptocurrencies%20scam&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (Or really, just combine "cryptocurrency" or "cryptocurrencies" with any negative word and throw it into search and you'll see the point.) All cryptocurrency has a serious reputation problem right now, and it's probably not going to go away for the considerable future.

by patrec 7y ago

agumonkey 7y ago

Success story are borderline stupid. Some companies are using haskell for non trivial needs, they just dont talk much about it.

kbumsik 7y ago
> Some companies are using haskell for non trivial needs, they just dont talk much about it. Sorry but doesn't this statement fit better to the definition of "borderline" something?
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Apologies if my comment felt offending. I've just seen a few stories about companies using non mainstream tools for important matter without making a product out of it. Caring only about known programs made in <lang> is shallow IMO
  - pron 7y ago
    If a language is used at a company and its use is not spreading rapidly within that company (as has happened with Fortran and C and Java/Python) you do ask yourself, is the language actually serving a business purpose, or is the business serving a "language purpose" by giving some fans their entertainment? I can't think of a worse signal for a language's value, or perhaps the size of its useful domain, than it being used for years at a company without spreading.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Mild point, there's no way a single language would suddenly progress through all layers no matter what its qualities. I understand your question though, it's highly possible that the devs picked haskell for their own interest. But so far it's been a few years and the haskell "module" is dealing with the core of their business.
      - pron 7y ago
        > there's no way a single language would suddenly progress through all layers no matter what its qualities. Except that's exactly what languages that provide a business value do (like the ones I mentioned). Maybe not always in all layers, but they tend to fill a big, wide niche at a company very quickly.
  - patrec 7y ago
    Well, to my mind the fact that Haskell has a large amount of mind share in academia and smart programmers, has been around for decades and there is very little to show for it[*] that I'm aware off makes me think it almost certainly has negative average utility for developing useful software. Why would you think otherwise? I'm not saying it will necessarily have negative utility for your particular problem, or that the negative utility it has might not be a cost worth swallowing in order to hire some really smart programmers who happen to like it.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      You could argue the opposite too. How many pure fp things from academia managed to even survive out of the publication phase ? I'm not that pro-haskell but I also see how all languages in the last decade shifted toward fp idioms clearly. I mean redux is a fold.
      - patrec 7y ago
        I don't understand your argument, in that I really can't see how one can equally argue the opposite. I fully acknowledge that Haskell has been successful as a test bed for PL research, and I also think Haskell is an interesting language worth studying. It is also true that FP ideas have increasingly bled into mainstream languages over the past two decades. But that does in no way imply that Haskell is in any way a good general choice for writing useful software. And although a lot of practically useful stuff has come out of Haskell-land (property based testing, for example), it's not even obvious to me that Haskell has been a huge part of the shift to more FP-y idioms (compared, to say, scheme or SML). Your own example, fold, has been around decades before Haskell.
        agumonkey 7y ago
        What can I say, I didn't read why es6, php or cpp lifted closures into the language. I consider this is pure FP influence which haskell is the most known instance. And yeah scheme and sml were prior art, but sml is not even on the map of PL choices (I saw it mentionned in rust history, but I think it's mostly the eager semantics, otherwise you could replace it with any pure FP language)

exdsq 7y ago

IOHK (iohk.io) and Galois (galois.com) both use Haskell. Edit: I forgot about consultancies like Well-Typed and Tweag

pron 7y ago
Both are research companies.
- exdsq 7y ago
  IOHK has a research arm but does build products, Galois is almost entirely on the D side of R&D (from what I understand).
kryptiskt 7y ago
Two big names are Target and Standard Chartered. Another trend (that I don't particularly like) is all the blockchain startups using Haskell.
- exdsq 7y ago
  Out of interest, why not? I'm slightly biased on this point.
  - kick 7y ago
    You must know how bad of a reputation cryptocurrencies have at this point, right? They aren't exactly loved, especially around these parts. Cardano (which I'm assuming is what IOHK works on) may be different, it might not be, but either way it has an uphill climb to be recognized as anything better than, well... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=cryptocurrencies%20destroy%20env&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=cryptocurrencies%20scam&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (Or really, just combine "cryptocurrency" or "cryptocurrencies" with any negative word and throw it into search and you'll see the point.) All cryptocurrency has a serious reputation problem right now, and it's probably not going to go away for the considerable future.