6 ms·

Haskell is pretty nice for building web applications. Thanks to it's type system you can build much more stable web apps in less time. Usually later in the app

by _query 6y ago

Haskell is pretty nice for building web applications. Thanks to it's type system you can build much more stable web apps in less time. Usually later in the application life cycle you have a hard time refactoring stuff when working with e.g. JS or rails. Without tests you will definitly break stuff. With haskell you can confidently refactor your code without worrying about breaking stuff, the compiler will tell you. The way data structure are declared in haskell is also very nice for domain modeling. You don't have as much boilerplate as e.g. when using PHP with doctrine. The performance is also pretty good compared to python or rails.

Guthur 6y ago
Empirically the evidence suggests all those languages without Haskells type system are doing fine considering that the vast majority of the software is not written in Haskell in its actually running. Frankly hiring is just a way harder problem than building a Web app, and fixing JS, Java python or whatever engineers is significantly easier than finding reasonable Haskell engineers.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  > the vast majority of the software is not written in Haskell in its actually running. The vast majority of software has horrible domain and security bugs! I am not one of those people who complains about the bloated state of websites or app stores, but the vast majority of software is not “fine,” especially software written in Python or JavaScript.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Utter nonsense to imply that Haskell would suddenly fix bad security. Haskell code can have security issues too hidden inside some too clever for it's on good language extension ridden Haskell code. Too be honest I think there is likely only a handful of people like Ed Knett who actually grok and write effective Haskell code, and guess what he'd also write good C++ code as well.
    - ojnabieoot 6y ago
      I didn’t say Haskell would fix bad security! My point is that it’s nonsense to suggest that existing languages are “just fine.” But many security bugs in C or C++ come down to sloppy types, sloppy pointers, or sloppy concurrency, all of which are almost impossible to do in Haskell. Haskell is not a replacement for C or C++ but its ideas are (and should be) influencing systems programmers. I don’t actually like Haskell. But there is a reason why major organizations are considering Rust over C and C++: those languages are simply not sufficient for writing secure and robust software in the 21st century, and Rust has taken many of the “best parts” of Haskell to improve systems programming.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    The vast majority of software is successful despite those bugs.
jwr 6y ago
Can you use it to write code that will be used (compiled) both server-side and client-side? Because these days this is my bar for a language that is "nice for building web applications". I've gotten so much mileage out of Clojure+ClojureScript just because of this, it's not even funny.
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  Yes, Haskell had ghcjs long before we even had wasm
- Quekid5 6y ago
  You can, but it's... a bit messy unless you're using Nix as the build platform. Hopefully there will be a WASM backend for GHC... I mean, it's bound to happen right? :) If you want statically checked types, I'd probably say that Scala is better at the server+client game (i.e. when you want to have both). Of course, Scala has its own drawbacks wrt. Haskell: lack of typed effects is a big one for me. (Just for context: I work on a website+SPA written entirely in Scala which has been around for years and years. I also have quite a lot of experience in Haskell.)
  - sideeffffect 6y ago
    > Scala has its own drawbacks wrt. Haskell: lack of typed effects is a big one for me. There are libraries like ZIO, Cats Effect or Monix. Give them a try! Some people might even say that for example ZIO is even better than Haskell's IO.
    - Quekid5 6y ago
      Oh, I know about them. In fact, I'm trying to introduce ZIO in my Scala-mostly company. The problem is that a stray UUID.randomUUID() can destroy any and all guarantees. (We're already using Monix.) That truly is the singular reason that I still prefer Haskell over Scala. I can get over syntax awkwardness, etc. etc. The impure-in-pure is... difficult when you can't just grep for unsafe*, etc. EDIT: Fwiw, ZIO is definitely better than Haskell's IO. Better than RIO? Perhaps. Is it better than polysemy, tho? I don't think so. Btw, I know about polysemy's issues as well... hopefully lexi-lambda can get her GHC runtime changes merged so that we can have a true "free" effect system backed by a tailored runtime. Interestingly, Project Loom is also heading in a similar direction (first class continuations) on the JVM. Interesting times!
unnouinceput 6y ago
You cannot create web applications without JavaScript these days. It does not matter what is your server side programming language, you need to send to the client JavaScript code to be executed in browser. And that in itself is a shitshow. End of story.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Hmm. Time for a Haskell-to-Javascript compiler.
  - KurtMueller 6y ago
    https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs
- fulafel 6y ago
  From another perspective you could say that JS is usually just a compile target these days, in many cases the source language is modern version of JS but in many other cases it's ClojureScript, TypeScript or something else.
dom96 6y ago
For most web apps correctness is not the most important thing, this is why Python and PHP are/were so popular. What is important is flexibility, Haskell's strict typing definitely impedes flexibility so I disagree with you that it's nice for building web apps.
- _query 6y ago
  The value of type safety is more that you're more productive because you can faster change things (as the compiler tells you what needs to be changed). This allows for faster iteration on your product. Correctness is indeed not the most important thing, it's kind of a nice side effect.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Correctness is not the most important thing unless it is. Security bugs often stem from sloppiness and incorrectness. It depends on the use case.

by _query 6y ago

Guthur 6y ago

Empirically the evidence suggests all those languages without Haskells type system are doing fine considering that the vast majority of the software is not written in Haskell in its actually running. Frankly hiring is just a way harder problem than building a Web app, and fixing JS, Java python or whatever engineers is significantly easier than finding reasonable Haskell engineers.

ojnabieoot 6y ago
> the vast majority of the software is not written in Haskell in its actually running. The vast majority of software has horrible domain and security bugs! I am not one of those people who complains about the bloated state of websites or app stores, but the vast majority of software is not “fine,” especially software written in Python or JavaScript.
- Guthur 6y ago
  Utter nonsense to imply that Haskell would suddenly fix bad security. Haskell code can have security issues too hidden inside some too clever for it's on good language extension ridden Haskell code. Too be honest I think there is likely only a handful of people like Ed Knett who actually grok and write effective Haskell code, and guess what he'd also write good C++ code as well.
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    I didn’t say Haskell would fix bad security! My point is that it’s nonsense to suggest that existing languages are “just fine.” But many security bugs in C or C++ come down to sloppy types, sloppy pointers, or sloppy concurrency, all of which are almost impossible to do in Haskell. Haskell is not a replacement for C or C++ but its ideas are (and should be) influencing systems programmers. I don’t actually like Haskell. But there is a reason why major organizations are considering Rust over C and C++: those languages are simply not sufficient for writing secure and robust software in the 21st century, and Rust has taken many of the “best parts” of Haskell to improve systems programming.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  The vast majority of software is successful despite those bugs.

jwr 6y ago

Can you use it to write code that will be used (compiled) both server-side and client-side? Because these days this is my bar for a language that is "nice for building web applications". I've gotten so much mileage out of Clojure+ClojureScript just because of this, it's not even funny.

jokethrowaway 6y ago
Yes, Haskell had ghcjs long before we even had wasm
Quekid5 6y ago
You can, but it's... a bit messy unless you're using Nix as the build platform. Hopefully there will be a WASM backend for GHC... I mean, it's bound to happen right? :) If you want statically checked types, I'd probably say that Scala is better at the server+client game (i.e. when you want to have both). Of course, Scala has its own drawbacks wrt. Haskell: lack of typed effects is a big one for me. (Just for context: I work on a website+SPA written entirely in Scala which has been around for years and years. I also have quite a lot of experience in Haskell.)
- sideeffffect 6y ago
  > Scala has its own drawbacks wrt. Haskell: lack of typed effects is a big one for me. There are libraries like ZIO, Cats Effect or Monix. Give them a try! Some people might even say that for example ZIO is even better than Haskell's IO.
  - Quekid5 6y ago
    Oh, I know about them. In fact, I'm trying to introduce ZIO in my Scala-mostly company. The problem is that a stray UUID.randomUUID() can destroy any and all guarantees. (We're already using Monix.) That truly is the singular reason that I still prefer Haskell over Scala. I can get over syntax awkwardness, etc. etc. The impure-in-pure is... difficult when you can't just grep for unsafe*, etc. EDIT: Fwiw, ZIO is definitely better than Haskell's IO. Better than RIO? Perhaps. Is it better than polysemy, tho? I don't think so. Btw, I know about polysemy's issues as well... hopefully lexi-lambda can get her GHC runtime changes merged so that we can have a true "free" effect system backed by a tailored runtime. Interestingly, Project Loom is also heading in a similar direction (first class continuations) on the JVM. Interesting times!

unnouinceput 6y ago

You cannot create web applications without JavaScript these days. It does not matter what is your server side programming language, you need to send to the client JavaScript code to be executed in browser. And that in itself is a shitshow. End of story.

pjc50 6y ago
Hmm. Time for a Haskell-to-Javascript compiler.
- KurtMueller 6y ago
  https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs
fulafel 6y ago
From another perspective you could say that JS is usually just a compile target these days, in many cases the source language is modern version of JS but in many other cases it's ClojureScript, TypeScript or something else.

dom96 6y ago

For most web apps correctness is not the most important thing, this is why Python and PHP are/were so popular. What is important is flexibility, Haskell's strict typing definitely impedes flexibility so I disagree with you that it's nice for building web apps.

_query 6y ago
The value of type safety is more that you're more productive because you can faster change things (as the compiler tells you what needs to be changed). This allows for faster iteration on your product. Correctness is indeed not the most important thing, it's kind of a nice side effect.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Correctness is not the most important thing unless it is. Security bugs often stem from sloppiness and incorrectness. It depends on the use case.