7 ms·

Silk: why we use Haskell

101 points by derwiki 16y ago

joelburget 16y ago
"And most of all, Haskell makes programming fun!" - If you're doing a startup make sure you choose a language you enjoy. You're going to be spending a lot of time using it. (Also applies to cofounders and the application itself.)
- BasDirks 16y ago
  I was gonna quote exactly the same, to affirm this. Haskell is an absolute joy to program in. Nothing in the code of a Haskell program feels like "extra" or "too much".
- j_baker 16y ago
  It never ceases to amaze me how few people forget to take this into account when choosing technologies and focus strictly on what's practical. The best route is usually to choose something that's fun and practical. (and before someone corrects me, yes I know sometimes you can't do that, and yes I know that in that situation you usually have to choose practicality over fun)
qjz 16y ago
Nice synopsis of Haskell as a language, but it doesn't touch on why they chose it for server side web application programming, specifically. I'd be interested in knowing if it's capable, scalable and stable enough to provide a platform to build on for the next few years. Based on its history to date, are there protections in place for backwards compatibility, or are they likely to end up pinning to an obsolete version? Does the standard library support web services (SSL, unicode, etc.), or will they need to turn to third parties or code essential building blocks from scratch?
- ionfish 16y ago
  One thing worth noting here is that the article dates from 2009; things have improved a lot since then vis a vis web development in Haskell. New frameworks (Snap, Yesod) have sprung up, and the library and toolchain support have improved immeasurably. To answer some of your questions a little more directly (I hope someone like dons with a more encyclopaedic knowledge can pitch in here): * As a language, Haskell is both very stable and very cutting-edge. This is because GHC (the only Haskell compiler people use seriously for production, at least as far as I'm aware) supports both the Haskell '98 standard, and the more recent Haskell 2010 standard—but it also supports a large number of language extensions [1] such as type families, existential types, GADTs etc. So * In terms of scalability, some of the recent benchmarks for Haskell-based web servers have been very impressive. Whether or not this translates into real-world performance is something we'll see as more people start using them in production. Recent improvements to the GHC I/O manager make the case for Haskell more compelling in this regard than it used to be. * It's pretty easy in Haskell to write wrappers around C libraries, such as OpenSSL. There are also moves to implement more of these core parts of any web stack in pure Haskell, although getting them to feature-completion is a process that will take time. A couple of recent reads spring to mind: a Stack Overflow discussion [1] where Alex Payne asked about Haskell tools to make programs production-ready, and Johan Tibell's article [2] on which Haskell libraries one should use. [1] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.3/html/users_guide/ghc-language-features.html http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.3/html/users_guide/ghc-l... [2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5808825/what-are-the-best-haskell-libraries-to-operationalize-a-program http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5808825/what-are-the-best... [3] http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/04/haskell-libraries-you-should-use.html http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/04/haskell-libraries-you-sh...
  - dons 16y ago
    Specifically, with respect to openssl and unicode * The language standard specifies Unicode strings * The Haskell Platform library standard adds support for Unicode IO based on packed text buffers * OpenSSL is provided via the venerable hopenssl library And there are many happy web users, such as Janrain, Galois, typLab, Bump, Deutsche Bank and others. The ecosystem is in a pretty nice place now.
technomancy 16y ago
Further proof of my theory that GHC's license has a clause buried in it stating that you must post an explanation of monads on your blog in order to use it.
- Confusion 16y ago
  I'm not sure whether you are serious, cynical or tongue-in-cheek, so I feel it necessary to point out that they are not actually explaining monads. They provide an answer to the question that everyone will ask: "how do you do I/O in a language in which all computations are supposed to be free of side-effects, when I/O is obviously a side-effect?" The answer to that question is 'monads', but that's as far as they go. They don't actually explain anything about monads.
joeburke 16y ago
Predictably, this blog post reads like a Haskell pamphlet and it hits all the Bingo marks: purity, no side effects, ah but yes side effects with the IO monads, monads, concurrency, the awesome community (seriously? Have they actually looked into it? The #haskell irc channel is moderated by Tony Morris, a lunatic who's been banned from many mailing-lists and channels because of several psychological disorders he suffers from), etc... Even more predictably, not a single word on more pragmatic reasons to choose Haskell as a startup, such as: web and networking support, logging, database access, etc... The odds of a startup succeeding are already vanishingly small, why make it even harder on yourself by picking an exotic language that's all but unknown in the work force? <shakes head>
- dons 16y ago
  Ad hominem attacks have no place here.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    It's a personal attack, but not actually an ad hominem attack. There is a difference between "McDonalds has a bad business model because their burgers are gross" and "McDonalds is unpleasant to eat at because their burgers are gross." The poster's attack is of the second form.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - mail2345 16y ago
      Still fallacious. To continue your analogy, this is like saying that all McDonald's stores have unpleasant food because of that one store. Yes, something should be done if it wasn't a one time thing, but no that does not mean the other stores necessarily have the issue(although they could).
- Peaker 16y ago
  "Haskell has no side effects" is true, but only in the sense that they are no longer side effects but simply "effects" as they are marked a such. The idea isn't to get rid of effects but to quarantine them, separate them from simple functions into "procedures". This means you get to have real functions in Haskell, and they truly are easier to compose together than what other languages call "functions" but are actually procedures. As for concurrency, Haskell is really in a unique spot, where you can get the performance of threads and the simplicity of processes: the immutability of everything not explicitly created for inter-thread communication gives you the same safety of IPC, but the shared memory gives you threads' performance. I think the benefits outlined on the page may not be specific to web development, but they definitely apply to it too. I haven't seen Tony Morris abuse anyone in the community, and the IRC channel is an amazing combination of immense knowledge and patience with newbies.
russellallen 16y ago
The most important sentence for me was "Two of us (me and Sebas) are enrolled in the Software Technology master program at Utrecht University, where we often use the programming language Haskell." What you're familiar and comfortable with is one of the most important considerations in language/platform choice.
j_baker 16y ago
Thank God. An article advocating Haskell that doesn't descend into some variant of "You will go to Hell if you aren't using a strongly-typed, pure, and lazy programming language."
kaffiene 16y ago
Look, I like Haskell. If I were writing a language, I'd steal Haskell's List Comprehensions in a heartbeat, but seriously - why do I care what some startup is using? I'm a little interested in what successful businesses have done but why would I care that a couple of grads chose their favourite language from their Uni course to attempt some real work in? As a professional software developer, I see nothing at all of value in this article. TL;DR; Newbs with very little experience upon which to base comparisons go "Yay Haskell". That said "Yay Haskell" :o)

101 points by derwiki 16y ago

"And most of all, Haskell makes programming fun!" - If you're doing a startup make sure you choose a language you enjoy. You're going to be spending a lot of time using it. (Also applies to cofounders and the application itself.)

BasDirks 16y ago
I was gonna quote exactly the same, to affirm this. Haskell is an absolute joy to program in. Nothing in the code of a Haskell program feels like "extra" or "too much".
j_baker 16y ago
It never ceases to amaze me how few people forget to take this into account when choosing technologies and focus strictly on what's practical. The best route is usually to choose something that's fun and practical. (and before someone corrects me, yes I know sometimes you can't do that, and yes I know that in that situation you usually have to choose practicality over fun)

qjz 16y ago

Nice synopsis of Haskell as a language, but it doesn't touch on why they chose it for server side web application programming, specifically. I'd be interested in knowing if it's capable, scalable and stable enough to provide a platform to build on for the next few years. Based on its history to date, are there protections in place for backwards compatibility, or are they likely to end up pinning to an obsolete version? Does the standard library support web services (SSL, unicode, etc.), or will they need to turn to third parties or code essential building blocks from scratch?

ionfish 16y ago
One thing worth noting here is that the article dates from 2009; things have improved a lot since then vis a vis web development in Haskell. New frameworks (Snap, Yesod) have sprung up, and the library and toolchain support have improved immeasurably. To answer some of your questions a little more directly (I hope someone like dons with a more encyclopaedic knowledge can pitch in here): * As a language, Haskell is both very stable and very cutting-edge. This is because GHC (the only Haskell compiler people use seriously for production, at least as far as I'm aware) supports both the Haskell '98 standard, and the more recent Haskell 2010 standard—but it also supports a large number of language extensions [1] such as type families, existential types, GADTs etc. So * In terms of scalability, some of the recent benchmarks for Haskell-based web servers have been very impressive. Whether or not this translates into real-world performance is something we'll see as more people start using them in production. Recent improvements to the GHC I/O manager make the case for Haskell more compelling in this regard than it used to be. * It's pretty easy in Haskell to write wrappers around C libraries, such as OpenSSL. There are also moves to implement more of these core parts of any web stack in pure Haskell, although getting them to feature-completion is a process that will take time. A couple of recent reads spring to mind: a Stack Overflow discussion [1] where Alex Payne asked about Haskell tools to make programs production-ready, and Johan Tibell's article [2] on which Haskell libraries one should use. [1] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.3/html/users_guide/ghc-language-features.html http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.3/html/users_guide/ghc-l... [2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5808825/what-are-the-best-haskell-libraries-to-operationalize-a-program http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5808825/what-are-the-best... [3] http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/04/haskell-libraries-you-should-use.html http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/04/haskell-libraries-you-sh...
- dons 16y ago
  Specifically, with respect to openssl and unicode * The language standard specifies Unicode strings * The Haskell Platform library standard adds support for Unicode IO based on packed text buffers * OpenSSL is provided via the venerable hopenssl library And there are many happy web users, such as Janrain, Galois, typLab, Bump, Deutsche Bank and others. The ecosystem is in a pretty nice place now.

technomancy 16y ago

Further proof of my theory that GHC's license has a clause buried in it stating that you must post an explanation of monads on your blog in order to use it.

Confusion 16y ago
I'm not sure whether you are serious, cynical or tongue-in-cheek, so I feel it necessary to point out that they are not actually explaining monads. They provide an answer to the question that everyone will ask: "how do you do I/O in a language in which all computations are supposed to be free of side-effects, when I/O is obviously a side-effect?" The answer to that question is 'monads', but that's as far as they go. They don't actually explain anything about monads.

joeburke 16y ago

Predictably, this blog post reads like a Haskell pamphlet and it hits all the Bingo marks: purity, no side effects, ah but yes side effects with the IO monads, monads, concurrency, the awesome community (seriously? Have they actually looked into it? The #haskell irc channel is moderated by Tony Morris, a lunatic who's been banned from many mailing-lists and channels because of several psychological disorders he suffers from), etc... Even more predictably, not a single word on more pragmatic reasons to choose Haskell as a startup, such as: web and networking support, logging, database access, etc... The odds of a startup succeeding are already vanishingly small, why make it even harder on yourself by picking an exotic language that's all but unknown in the work force? <shakes head>

dons 16y ago
Ad hominem attacks have no place here.
- scott_s 16y ago
  It's a personal attack, but not actually an ad hominem attack. There is a difference between "McDonalds has a bad business model because their burgers are gross" and "McDonalds is unpleasant to eat at because their burgers are gross." The poster's attack is of the second form.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - mail2345 16y ago
    Still fallacious. To continue your analogy, this is like saying that all McDonald's stores have unpleasant food because of that one store. Yes, something should be done if it wasn't a one time thing, but no that does not mean the other stores necessarily have the issue(although they could).
Peaker 16y ago
"Haskell has no side effects" is true, but only in the sense that they are no longer side effects but simply "effects" as they are marked a such. The idea isn't to get rid of effects but to quarantine them, separate them from simple functions into "procedures". This means you get to have real functions in Haskell, and they truly are easier to compose together than what other languages call "functions" but are actually procedures. As for concurrency, Haskell is really in a unique spot, where you can get the performance of threads and the simplicity of processes: the immutability of everything not explicitly created for inter-thread communication gives you the same safety of IPC, but the shared memory gives you threads' performance. I think the benefits outlined on the page may not be specific to web development, but they definitely apply to it too. I haven't seen Tony Morris abuse anyone in the community, and the IRC channel is an amazing combination of immense knowledge and patience with newbies.

russellallen 16y ago

The most important sentence for me was "Two of us (me and Sebas) are enrolled in the Software Technology master program at Utrecht University, where we often use the programming language Haskell." What you're familiar and comfortable with is one of the most important considerations in language/platform choice.

j_baker 16y ago

Thank God. An article advocating Haskell that doesn't descend into some variant of "You will go to Hell if you aren't using a strongly-typed, pure, and lazy programming language."

kaffiene 16y ago

Look, I like Haskell. If I were writing a language, I'd steal Haskell's List Comprehensions in a heartbeat, but seriously - why do I care what some startup is using? I'm a little interested in what successful businesses have done but why would I care that a couple of grads chose their favourite language from their Uni course to attempt some real work in? As a professional software developer, I see nothing at all of value in this article. TL;DR; Newbs with very little experience upon which to base comparisons go "Yay Haskell". That said "Yay Haskell" :o)