8 ms·

2021 State of Haskell Survey

24 points by taylorfausak 5y ago

gavinray 5y ago
This language has some of the worst tooling I've ever encountered in my life. I could go on and write you novels about it, and if someone really wants to know I can provide a massively detailed, exhaustive list with logs, screenshots, Github issues, etc. But sweet jesus, you'd think in 2021 a basic tenet of a language would be: "I want autocomplete + hover-docs to work on a project which has +50 dependency libraries and several hundred files." (Reliably, without segfaulting every few minutes or eating up massive amounts of resources). The language may be the best thing since sliced bread, but the tooling/ecosystem and authorship process is absolutely the worst thing I've ever touched. Here's a particularly funny one: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26604994/139553801-72ed6dec-5e78-4af9-b3b5-a158bc69e457.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26604994/139553801... Even "experimental" languages like Nim and Zig had a more reliable and easier to use tooling and IDE integration than Haskell did (for me), despite Haskell being ~31 years old.
- _se 5y ago
  Been working perfectly for me since 2018. Ymmv I guess? Not sure why you'd take that attitude though, really not a great way to get across whatever point you think you have other than that you can rant.
  - gavinray 5y ago
    > Not sure why you'd take that attitude though, really not a great way to get across whatever point you think you have My point is that Haskell is older than I am, and still hasn't figured out to produce a decent developer experience. I guess to fail to understand how if the language is as fantastic as it's made out to be, why there's no equivalent to rust-analyzer or Eclipse jdt.ls and it can't build my company's 50MB binary in less than half an hour. And why is this state of affairs tolerated for decades? Pascal/Delphi had an IDE and Dev UX that, according to programmers old enough to have used it, surpasses the productivity of most modern tools. And it is capable of compiling a billion lines of code in a couple of minutes. https://www.fmxexpress.com/ryzen-9-5950x-one-billion-lines-of-delphi-code-compiled-in-5-minutes-on-16-cores/ https://www.fmxexpress.com/ryzen-9-5950x-one-billion-lines-o... So what is up with Haskell? "Ymmv I guess" isn't what I would call a sound approach to core language tooling. > other than that you can rant. Oh no, I purposefully left all of the concrete complaints and details out. Unless someone wants to. Then I can dump a wall of particular things that are broken. See: "and if someone really wants to know I can provide a massively detailed, exhaustive list with logs, screenshots, Github issues, etc."
    - ghostwriter 5y ago
      > I guess to fail to understand how if the language is as fantastic as it's made out to be, why there's no equivalent to rust-analyzer or Eclipse jdt.ls and it can't build my company's 50MB binary in less than half an hour. And why is this state of affairs tolerated for decades? You fail to understand that this is your personal experience based on the approaches you've chosen to apply. I have no problems with HLS, VC Code, and Cabal, everything works seamlessly. I use Nix to bootstrap everything, I split my software into smaller packages so that I benefit from distributed, incremental, and cached Nix builds, and my statically linked binaries rarely exceed 10 Mib after UPX. I couldn't care less whether it's part of Haskell distribution, because the same language-independent toolchain I use in several different stacks works for GHC too. I'd rather let GHC maintainers work on compiler and language features than expected them to re-invent Nix functionality for the sake of it being part of the compiler distribution.
      - gavinray 5y ago
        > I have no problems with HLS, VC Code, and Cabal, everything works seamlessly. So do I -- until I try to use them on massive, realworld projects. > You fail to understand that this is your personal experience based on the approaches you've chosen to apply. First off -- I can't write Haskell. I only think all of this because of time working on tooling trying to make it easier for other people that DO write Haskell to contribute, via publishing configurations and other things. Sometimes you don't get to make the choices, and you're stuck with someone else's architecture decisions and a team + community of people doing the best they can with them. You've never compiled GHC from source? How long does that take on your machine? The moment someone gets a codebase that has hundreds/thousands of files working with proper language server diagnostics in an IDE with +24 hours uptime (like every other production-grade language) I will eat my shoe.
        ghostwriter 5y ago
        > You've never compiled GHC from source? How long does that take on your machine? I have, but the point is that I don't have to, because there are transparent distributed builds in Nix that I utilise when I want to compile something big, as you say "real-world", fast. I split software into many small self-contained packages and delegate the work of compiling it all to remote machines configured for faster compilation times, and then I just pull complete binaries onto my laptop (https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/advanced-topics/distributed-builds.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/advanced-topics/distri...). Subsequent changes in smaller packages are rebuilt incrementally. My point and the answer to your question ("And why is this state of affairs tolerated for decades?") is that GHC doesn't have to implement its own version of dev environment bootstrapping, distributed builds and other niceties as part of their core tooling, because it's already solved on other level of dev-infra tooling, they can just provide links to working solutions and explain them, for instance haskell.nix (https://github.com/input-output-hk/haskell.nix https://github.com/input-output-hk/haskell.nix)
  - tome 5y ago
    Experience reports are extremely valuable to the Haskell community so it's helpful to the community to encourage rather than discourage them!
- tome 5y ago
  > I could go on and write you novels about it, and if someone really wants to know I can provide a massively detailed, exhaustive list with logs, screenshots, Github issues, etc. Hello, yes, I really want to know! I am on the board of the Haskell Foundation and improving developer tooling is likely to be one of our focus points in the near future. User experience reports will help us make progress. My email address is in my profile (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tome https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tome).
  - Zababa 5y ago
    It's very nice to know that people with the right attitude are in the Haskell Foundation.
  - gavinray 5y ago
    Wow, very surprising answer. Will genuinely take you up on this, and try to condense things into an easy-to-read list =)
    - tome 5y ago
      Thanks, looking forward to it!
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  > despite Haskell being ~31 years old. Tbf I think things are worse now than a few years ago because of the explosion of new Haskell code, plus the resulting several somewhat conflicting re-imaginings of the tooling to deal the increased complexity of juggling the now-huge code corpus. Stack, the original cabal, the current different cabal, Haskell Platform, etc. I like to think the vigorous activity in this area is not entirely unhealthy, since it is about identifying and attacking real problems. But, for those of us not in the middle of it and just want something that works, it is somewhat painful. Tome, I can write up some issues and email them to you, but basically we need a better out-of-box experience. "stack ghci" takes so long to start up on an HDD server (tons of stuff getting paged in) that I keep thinking it has simply hung, while the old ghci was nowhere near that slow. Emacs Haskell mode goes into some crazy error loop if you try to use a ghci subprocess window (that used to work great). Haskell Platform (a blessed set of packages, more or less) was a good idea in principle but I think it became unmanageable and stopped being maintained. I haven't done anything with Haskell in a while and this kind of thing is the main obstacle. Command-line ghc (ok, stack ghc) still works so it is still possible to compile stuff less conveniently when required. Mostly though, I just use other languages. If I were using Haskell for daily work then I could probably reach some reasonable tooling setup with enough effort, but as an occasional user it just hasn't been worth it.

24 points by taylorfausak 5y ago

This language has some of the worst tooling I've ever encountered in my life. I could go on and write you novels about it, and if someone really wants to know I can provide a massively detailed, exhaustive list with logs, screenshots, Github issues, etc. But sweet jesus, you'd think in 2021 a basic tenet of a language would be: "I want autocomplete + hover-docs to work on a project which has +50 dependency libraries and several hundred files." (Reliably, without segfaulting every few minutes or eating up massive amounts of resources). The language may be the best thing since sliced bread, but the tooling/ecosystem and authorship process is absolutely the worst thing I've ever touched. Here's a particularly funny one: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26604994/139553801-72ed6dec-5e78-4af9-b3b5-a158bc69e457.png https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26604994/139553801... Even "experimental" languages like Nim and Zig had a more reliable and easier to use tooling and IDE integration than Haskell did (for me), despite Haskell being ~31 years old.

_se 5y ago
Been working perfectly for me since 2018. Ymmv I guess? Not sure why you'd take that attitude though, really not a great way to get across whatever point you think you have other than that you can rant.
- gavinray 5y ago
  > Not sure why you'd take that attitude though, really not a great way to get across whatever point you think you have My point is that Haskell is older than I am, and still hasn't figured out to produce a decent developer experience. I guess to fail to understand how if the language is as fantastic as it's made out to be, why there's no equivalent to rust-analyzer or Eclipse jdt.ls and it can't build my company's 50MB binary in less than half an hour. And why is this state of affairs tolerated for decades? Pascal/Delphi had an IDE and Dev UX that, according to programmers old enough to have used it, surpasses the productivity of most modern tools. And it is capable of compiling a billion lines of code in a couple of minutes. https://www.fmxexpress.com/ryzen-9-5950x-one-billion-lines-of-delphi-code-compiled-in-5-minutes-on-16-cores/ https://www.fmxexpress.com/ryzen-9-5950x-one-billion-lines-o... So what is up with Haskell? "Ymmv I guess" isn't what I would call a sound approach to core language tooling. > other than that you can rant. Oh no, I purposefully left all of the concrete complaints and details out. Unless someone wants to. Then I can dump a wall of particular things that are broken. See: "and if someone really wants to know I can provide a massively detailed, exhaustive list with logs, screenshots, Github issues, etc."
  - ghostwriter 5y ago
    > I guess to fail to understand how if the language is as fantastic as it's made out to be, why there's no equivalent to rust-analyzer or Eclipse jdt.ls and it can't build my company's 50MB binary in less than half an hour. And why is this state of affairs tolerated for decades? You fail to understand that this is your personal experience based on the approaches you've chosen to apply. I have no problems with HLS, VC Code, and Cabal, everything works seamlessly. I use Nix to bootstrap everything, I split my software into smaller packages so that I benefit from distributed, incremental, and cached Nix builds, and my statically linked binaries rarely exceed 10 Mib after UPX. I couldn't care less whether it's part of Haskell distribution, because the same language-independent toolchain I use in several different stacks works for GHC too. I'd rather let GHC maintainers work on compiler and language features than expected them to re-invent Nix functionality for the sake of it being part of the compiler distribution.
    - gavinray 5y ago
      > I have no problems with HLS, VC Code, and Cabal, everything works seamlessly. So do I -- until I try to use them on massive, realworld projects. > You fail to understand that this is your personal experience based on the approaches you've chosen to apply. First off -- I can't write Haskell. I only think all of this because of time working on tooling trying to make it easier for other people that DO write Haskell to contribute, via publishing configurations and other things. Sometimes you don't get to make the choices, and you're stuck with someone else's architecture decisions and a team + community of people doing the best they can with them. You've never compiled GHC from source? How long does that take on your machine? The moment someone gets a codebase that has hundreds/thousands of files working with proper language server diagnostics in an IDE with +24 hours uptime (like every other production-grade language) I will eat my shoe.
      - ghostwriter 5y ago
        > You've never compiled GHC from source? How long does that take on your machine? I have, but the point is that I don't have to, because there are transparent distributed builds in Nix that I utilise when I want to compile something big, as you say "real-world", fast. I split software into many small self-contained packages and delegate the work of compiling it all to remote machines configured for faster compilation times, and then I just pull complete binaries onto my laptop (https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/advanced-topics/distributed-builds.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/advanced-topics/distri...). Subsequent changes in smaller packages are rebuilt incrementally. My point and the answer to your question ("And why is this state of affairs tolerated for decades?") is that GHC doesn't have to implement its own version of dev environment bootstrapping, distributed builds and other niceties as part of their core tooling, because it's already solved on other level of dev-infra tooling, they can just provide links to working solutions and explain them, for instance haskell.nix (https://github.com/input-output-hk/haskell.nix https://github.com/input-output-hk/haskell.nix)
- tome 5y ago
  Experience reports are extremely valuable to the Haskell community so it's helpful to the community to encourage rather than discourage them!
tome 5y ago
> I could go on and write you novels about it, and if someone really wants to know I can provide a massively detailed, exhaustive list with logs, screenshots, Github issues, etc. Hello, yes, I really want to know! I am on the board of the Haskell Foundation and improving developer tooling is likely to be one of our focus points in the near future. User experience reports will help us make progress. My email address is in my profile (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tome https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tome).
- Zababa 5y ago
  It's very nice to know that people with the right attitude are in the Haskell Foundation.
- gavinray 5y ago
  Wow, very surprising answer. Will genuinely take you up on this, and try to condense things into an easy-to-read list =)
  - tome 5y ago
    Thanks, looking forward to it!
throwaway81523 5y ago
> despite Haskell being ~31 years old. Tbf I think things are worse now than a few years ago because of the explosion of new Haskell code, plus the resulting several somewhat conflicting re-imaginings of the tooling to deal the increased complexity of juggling the now-huge code corpus. Stack, the original cabal, the current different cabal, Haskell Platform, etc. I like to think the vigorous activity in this area is not entirely unhealthy, since it is about identifying and attacking real problems. But, for those of us not in the middle of it and just want something that works, it is somewhat painful. Tome, I can write up some issues and email them to you, but basically we need a better out-of-box experience. "stack ghci" takes so long to start up on an HDD server (tons of stuff getting paged in) that I keep thinking it has simply hung, while the old ghci was nowhere near that slow. Emacs Haskell mode goes into some crazy error loop if you try to use a ghci subprocess window (that used to work great). Haskell Platform (a blessed set of packages, more or less) was a good idea in principle but I think it became unmanageable and stopped being maintained. I haven't done anything with Haskell in a while and this kind of thing is the main obstacle. Command-line ghc (ok, stack ghc) still works so it is still possible to compile stuff less conveniently when required. Mostly though, I just use other languages. If I were using Haskell for daily work then I could probably reach some reasonable tooling setup with enough effort, but as an occasional user it just hasn't been worth it.