7 ms·

Haskell2020 Is Dead, but All Hope Is Not Lost (2019)

84 points by signa11 5y ago

moomin 5y ago
I mean, when we say "Anyone could do it." we mean "Anyone with a strong enough understanding of Haskell's syntax and type system to be able to formalize it" which is a surprisingly small number of people. It's probably smaller than the number of professional Haskell developers and that isn't that big a number.
teddyh 5y ago
(2019)
- rkangel 5y ago
  Yes - this needs editing into the title as it's quite significant.
hutrdvnj 5y ago
I think that Haskell2010 could be the last Haskell standard. Modern Haskell has diverged to such a degree that it seems to be (almost) impossible to define a common standard. Even if they would, as long as there a over 100 language extension (increasing over time) there will be developers using them. Take a look at C++20, I think it's obvious that C++ is beyond repair at this point in time, even if you wouldn't add any more language features. Sure, a new Haskell standard would allow for more compiler competition and that's a good thing, but it cannot fix the language. I think what we really need is a new language that picks all the good parts from Haskell, but has a very small syntactical core. Something like Go, but purely functional. You might say Rust or Elm. But Rust is too performance oriented and already quite big, hence more like a C++ replacement. And Elm is too domain specific and maybe a bit too simple (lacks ad-hoc polymorphism). So maybe a general purpose Elm like language with ad-hoc polymorphism, but not as complex as Purescript, with a GC that compiles to binaries and WASM with a standard code formatter and very conservative regarding new language features, just like Golang.
- ParetoOptimal 5y ago
  > I think what we really need is a new language that picks all the good parts from Haskell, but has a very small syntactical core. Something like Go, This doesn't quite make sense to me because Haskell and Go are kind of polar opposites. Also many would say you are describing Haskell98 I think.
  - hutrdvnj 5y ago
    Maybe think of it like: What if Haskell and Go had a child?
    - speed_spread 5y ago
      Something like native F# ?
      - shirogane86x 5y ago
        disclaimer: I'm a haskell user who has worked professionally with F# for 3 years I don't think something like native F# would fit Haskell's niche: Haskell's type system is a lot more complete (and complex, by virtue of cruft and necessity) than F#'s. F# also has a lot of object oriented stuff which Haskell doesn't have (by design, i'd say). Maybe purescript or idris if they had more mature native compilation targets would come closer, but even those are strict (while Haskell is lazy) and laziness by default is a big thing that sets Haskell apart from virtually any other language in use.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - xvilka 5y ago
        F# is too restrictive and poor in terms of types and syntax. OCaml would make a better option as the Haskell "successor". Though, personally I don't think it will ever happen.
- sharikous 5y ago
_query 5y ago
Haskell is an underrated super power for building backends and web apps. Since 2019 when the blog post was written the ecosystem has improved quite a lot. With the Haskell Language Server and the Haskell Plugin for VS Code there's now really nice editor support. The language itself also got major improvements, e.g. support for dot-notation has been added, so you can now write `someValue.someField` as in other languages. If you're interested in Haskell and are doing web dev, check out IHP, Haskell's version of Laravel/Rails/Django: https://ihp.digitallyinduced.com/ https://ihp.digitallyinduced.com/ (Disclaimer: I'm founder of the company that makes IHP)
- tluyben2 5y ago
  IHP is a nice product and works really well for my side project; hopefully I can convince my colleagues to use it for our main project too.
  - _query 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing, really happy to hear this! :)
    - nextos 5y ago
      Slightly off-topic but how would you convince upper management or a fresh startup to use Haskell? What would be the selling points compared to more mainstream (non-lazy) functional choices? I'm pretty fluent in Haskell, but finding Haskell jobs is hard compared to OCaml or F#, which are a bit of a niche of their own. Actually, I routinely get OCaml offers when advertising Haskell on my CV. I find this interesting and exciting as OCaml was not very frequent outside academia a few years back.
      - throwaway17_17 5y ago
        I think management would have to buy in on developer investment. People who want to work with Haskell, on average, seem quite devoted. I feel like those devs who really want to use Haskell at production scale truly believe in functional programming as a superior endeavor, also, most devs devoted to Haskell also love advanced type systems and are particularly drawn to deeper Haskell the more they do it. Long statements, but I really do think employee retention and personal fulfillment would lead to a better working environment. So that is the way I’d argue it. Obviously a comprehensive sampling of performance metrics would be needed along with the more HR reasonings, but I think there are plenty of examples where Haskell is performing acceptably.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
auslegung 5y ago
I feel the need to plug the Haskell Foundation https://haskell.foundation/ https://haskell.foundation/. It’s where these sorts of discussions are happening today.
- bradrn 5y ago
  I concur. This post was excellent, but is now highly outdated. The Haskell Foundation is doing some amazing work in coordinating the development of Haskell, its ecosystem and its tooling. We don’t have Haskell202* yet, but only because there are more important things to do; if the Haskell Foundation decided to prioritise it, I feel confident that it would get done.
dmead 5y ago
To be fair, what was called Haskell prime and ended up being I guess Haskell 2010 also took forever. Haskell users have strong opinions about language syntax- I suppose moreso than your averaged user base. It may take a generation as Doug crockford says for those options to die and retire so new ones can come take their place. Looks like that still holds.
marcosdumay 5y ago
If you have a more pragmatic goal than standardizing the entire language, GCH2021 is a very good standard you can use today. But yes, the entire community will need some time to get together into any new idea.

84 points by signa11 5y ago

I mean, when we say "Anyone could do it." we mean "Anyone with a strong enough understanding of Haskell's syntax and type system to be able to formalize it" which is a surprisingly small number of people. It's probably smaller than the number of professional Haskell developers and that isn't that big a number.

teddyh 5y ago

(2019)

rkangel 5y ago
Yes - this needs editing into the title as it's quite significant.

hutrdvnj 5y ago

I think that Haskell2010 could be the last Haskell standard. Modern Haskell has diverged to such a degree that it seems to be (almost) impossible to define a common standard. Even if they would, as long as there a over 100 language extension (increasing over time) there will be developers using them. Take a look at C++20, I think it's obvious that C++ is beyond repair at this point in time, even if you wouldn't add any more language features. Sure, a new Haskell standard would allow for more compiler competition and that's a good thing, but it cannot fix the language. I think what we really need is a new language that picks all the good parts from Haskell, but has a very small syntactical core. Something like Go, but purely functional. You might say Rust or Elm. But Rust is too performance oriented and already quite big, hence more like a C++ replacement. And Elm is too domain specific and maybe a bit too simple (lacks ad-hoc polymorphism). So maybe a general purpose Elm like language with ad-hoc polymorphism, but not as complex as Purescript, with a GC that compiles to binaries and WASM with a standard code formatter and very conservative regarding new language features, just like Golang.

ParetoOptimal 5y ago
> I think what we really need is a new language that picks all the good parts from Haskell, but has a very small syntactical core. Something like Go, This doesn't quite make sense to me because Haskell and Go are kind of polar opposites. Also many would say you are describing Haskell98 I think.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  Maybe think of it like: What if Haskell and Go had a child?
  - speed_spread 5y ago
    Something like native F# ?
    - shirogane86x 5y ago
      disclaimer: I'm a haskell user who has worked professionally with F# for 3 years I don't think something like native F# would fit Haskell's niche: Haskell's type system is a lot more complete (and complex, by virtue of cruft and necessity) than F#'s. F# also has a lot of object oriented stuff which Haskell doesn't have (by design, i'd say). Maybe purescript or idris if they had more mature native compilation targets would come closer, but even those are strict (while Haskell is lazy) and laziness by default is a big thing that sets Haskell apart from virtually any other language in use.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - xvilka 5y ago
      F# is too restrictive and poor in terms of types and syntax. OCaml would make a better option as the Haskell "successor". Though, personally I don't think it will ever happen.
sharikous 5y ago

_query 5y ago

Haskell is an underrated super power for building backends and web apps. Since 2019 when the blog post was written the ecosystem has improved quite a lot. With the Haskell Language Server and the Haskell Plugin for VS Code there's now really nice editor support. The language itself also got major improvements, e.g. support for dot-notation has been added, so you can now write `someValue.someField` as in other languages. If you're interested in Haskell and are doing web dev, check out IHP, Haskell's version of Laravel/Rails/Django: https://ihp.digitallyinduced.com/ https://ihp.digitallyinduced.com/ (Disclaimer: I'm founder of the company that makes IHP)

tluyben2 5y ago
IHP is a nice product and works really well for my side project; hopefully I can convince my colleagues to use it for our main project too.
- _query 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing, really happy to hear this! :)
  - nextos 5y ago
    Slightly off-topic but how would you convince upper management or a fresh startup to use Haskell? What would be the selling points compared to more mainstream (non-lazy) functional choices? I'm pretty fluent in Haskell, but finding Haskell jobs is hard compared to OCaml or F#, which are a bit of a niche of their own. Actually, I routinely get OCaml offers when advertising Haskell on my CV. I find this interesting and exciting as OCaml was not very frequent outside academia a few years back.
    - throwaway17_17 5y ago
      I think management would have to buy in on developer investment. People who want to work with Haskell, on average, seem quite devoted. I feel like those devs who really want to use Haskell at production scale truly believe in functional programming as a superior endeavor, also, most devs devoted to Haskell also love advanced type systems and are particularly drawn to deeper Haskell the more they do it. Long statements, but I really do think employee retention and personal fulfillment would lead to a better working environment. So that is the way I’d argue it. Obviously a comprehensive sampling of performance metrics would be needed along with the more HR reasonings, but I think there are plenty of examples where Haskell is performing acceptably.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

auslegung 5y ago

I feel the need to plug the Haskell Foundation https://haskell.foundation/ https://haskell.foundation/. It’s where these sorts of discussions are happening today.

bradrn 5y ago
I concur. This post was excellent, but is now highly outdated. The Haskell Foundation is doing some amazing work in coordinating the development of Haskell, its ecosystem and its tooling. We don’t have Haskell202* yet, but only because there are more important things to do; if the Haskell Foundation decided to prioritise it, I feel confident that it would get done.

dmead 5y ago

To be fair, what was called Haskell prime and ended up being I guess Haskell 2010 also took forever. Haskell users have strong opinions about language syntax- I suppose moreso than your averaged user base. It may take a generation as Doug crockford says for those options to die and retire so new ones can come take their place. Looks like that still holds.

marcosdumay 5y ago

If you have a more pragmatic goal than standardizing the entire language, GCH2021 is a very good standard you can use today. But yes, the entire community will need some time to get together into any new idea.