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I have great respect for Stephen Diehl and love his writing. But I must respectfully disagree. I think it’s fantastic that Haskell is seeing more paying jobs an

by tbenst 6y ago

I have great respect for Stephen Diehl and love his writing. But I must respectfully disagree. I think it’s fantastic that Haskell is seeing more paying jobs and corporate sponsored development thanks to crypto, and indeed Haskell can help reduce fraud in cryptocurrency, like what happened with the Ethereum’s DAO. The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting but IMHO profoundly misguided. Crypto is not a fad; it is here to stay (or at least for some currencies!). He may disagree but it’s hard to imagine bitcoin disappearing in the next decade. I see the challenge more about what excites the current, established Haskell community (linear types! Freer monads!) vs the corporate community, who want maintainable and forward compatible code. Crypto companies could conceivably resist the traditionally fast pace of GHC development. Indeed, a lot of money rides on there being no exploitable bugs. For all my respect of Stephen and his tremendous technical expertise, I’m disappointed to see this argument being leveled as an armchair economist condemning his peer’s work on moral grounds. I think a different, equally rational person could look at crypto and see a future in it, and I don’t think we should cast aside people for having different future expectations. Disclosure: I am an investor in Kadena, a blockchain implemented in Haskell

ordinaryradical 6y ago
> The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting but IMHO profoundly misguided. Crypto is not a fad; it is here to stay By comparing cryptocurrencies to wildcat banks, he was not making a statement about cryptocurrency's longevity but about its utility. Money laundering and child pornography are not fads, and for those two reasons alone there will probably always be value in non-fiat currencies that preserve the user's anonymity. That does not make cryptocurrency something any community or individual should want a long-term association with.
- owl57 6y ago
  > Money laundering You mean the trade-off between global surveillance and easier life for some sorts of businesses. Is it immediately obvious which of these is more worth supporting? > and child pornography Oh yeah, think of the children. Never gets old.
- mantap 6y ago
  You can replace cryptocurrency with cash there and it's just as true. In fact, cash is much more anonymous than cryptocurrency as there is no paper trail. The value that cryptocurrency provides to criminals is the same value it provides to everybody else: easy transfers across borders, and storing money outside of the control of governments. You might trust your government but what percentage of the world's population should trust their government?
mcguire 6y ago
"Disclosure: I am an investor in Kadena, a blockchain implemented in Haskell" Dianne has been threatening to get me a "I'm sorry the sound of my eyes rolling bothered you" T-shirt.
- tbenst 6y ago
  I was a purescript developer and Haskell dabbler way before I was an investor, for what it’s worth, and happy to engage on the substance of my points if you would care to have a collegial discourse befitting of academics!
- msla 6y ago
  I'm surprised you associate with such problematic people.
st1ck 6y ago
Maybe I'm a bit silly about this, but can't linear or affine types be actually useful for blockchain? To represent something which can be used (spent) only once?
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  Possibly, but linear types only describe the rules that have to be followed by a program. Enforcing those rules has to be done by something somewhere -- typically for most software by a compiler at compile-time or by a runtime at execution time. In blockchain these rules are enforced by the consensus and validation algorithms.
TeeWEE 6y ago
I'm not disagreeing with you. But a funny note: You, as an investor are logically positive about this. Cause you want more poeple on board. Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies. However stable countries have monetary systems to fakely keep the value stable using financial instruments. The question is: is that a good thing?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies The value of individual currencies is based on trust in the institutions backing those currencies. The value of cryptocurrency as a technology (and currency in general), is not based on belief but on their real world utility, i.e do they function in some general way to satisfy some real need. (Exchanging value, storing value, and so on). If crypto-currency can solve all the issues it has concerning speed, stability and so on it might be there to stay, if it can't it's just going to exist on the fringes.

by tbenst 6y ago

ordinaryradical 6y ago

> The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting but IMHO profoundly misguided. Crypto is not a fad; it is here to stay By comparing cryptocurrencies to wildcat banks, he was not making a statement about cryptocurrency's longevity but about its utility. Money laundering and child pornography are not fads, and for those two reasons alone there will probably always be value in non-fiat currencies that preserve the user's anonymity. That does not make cryptocurrency something any community or individual should want a long-term association with.

owl57 6y ago
> Money laundering You mean the trade-off between global surveillance and easier life for some sorts of businesses. Is it immediately obvious which of these is more worth supporting? > and child pornography Oh yeah, think of the children. Never gets old.
mantap 6y ago
You can replace cryptocurrency with cash there and it's just as true. In fact, cash is much more anonymous than cryptocurrency as there is no paper trail. The value that cryptocurrency provides to criminals is the same value it provides to everybody else: easy transfers across borders, and storing money outside of the control of governments. You might trust your government but what percentage of the world's population should trust their government?

mcguire 6y ago

"Disclosure: I am an investor in Kadena, a blockchain implemented in Haskell" Dianne has been threatening to get me a "I'm sorry the sound of my eyes rolling bothered you" T-shirt.

tbenst 6y ago
I was a purescript developer and Haskell dabbler way before I was an investor, for what it’s worth, and happy to engage on the substance of my points if you would care to have a collegial discourse befitting of academics!
msla 6y ago
I'm surprised you associate with such problematic people.

st1ck 6y ago

Maybe I'm a bit silly about this, but can't linear or affine types be actually useful for blockchain? To represent something which can be used (spent) only once?

warkdarrior 6y ago
Possibly, but linear types only describe the rules that have to be followed by a program. Enforcing those rules has to be done by something somewhere -- typically for most software by a compiler at compile-time or by a runtime at execution time. In blockchain these rules are enforced by the consensus and validation algorithms.

TeeWEE 6y ago

I'm not disagreeing with you. But a funny note: You, as an investor are logically positive about this. Cause you want more poeple on board. Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies. However stable countries have monetary systems to fakely keep the value stable using financial instruments. The question is: is that a good thing?

Barrin92 6y ago
>Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies The value of individual currencies is based on trust in the institutions backing those currencies. The value of cryptocurrency as a technology (and currency in general), is not based on belief but on their real world utility, i.e do they function in some general way to satisfy some real need. (Exchanging value, storing value, and so on). If crypto-currency can solve all the issues it has concerning speed, stability and so on it might be there to stay, if it can't it's just going to exist on the fringes.