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Would you say your interest in programming languages is largely academic in nature? I get the impression that Haskell mostly (for now at least) fits best with

Would you say your interest in programming languages is largely academic in nature? I get the impression that Haskell mostly (for now at least) fits best with academia, Java/C# for enterprise, python/ruby for smallish web apps, Go/C/C++/Java for industrial applications (like servers, etc). There is a very real possibility that Go is just not the right fit for you with your current requirements. No language is the right fit for every application.

DanWaterworth 14y ago
Haskell isn't just used in academia. It's used a Facebook for example, and no-one would accuse Facebook of being an academic company.
cpeterso 14y ago
And C/C++ is by developers to implement Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Go, C, and C++. :)
- pjmlp 14y ago
  Actually there are Java and C# compilers implemented on the own language.
ozataman 14y ago
Not at all. In fact about 95% of all Haskell I write - and I write quite a bit - is for commercial stuff, ranging all the way across large-ish (not quite google-scale, yet) scale computation, distributed systems, machine learning, modeling/simulations and web development. More academic feeling stuff like parsing and DSLs are just the cherries on top (though even those were for commercial uses). I'll admit Haskell has a steep learning curve, but once you're there, all this stuff Go is said to do real well feels fairly lackluster compared to what you can find in Haskell-land. What's built into Go can be achieved at the library level in Haskell. As a result, we keep seeing better and better manifestations of key ideas in the library space. Examples include Cloud Haskell, many, many concurrency libraries, STM, Parallel Haskell, many constant-space data streaming libraries (pipes, conduits, enumerators, ...), several excellent parsing libraries (parsec, attoparsec, trifecta, ...), etc. As a side note, I used to do lots of python/ruby - I really can't anymore. They feel simultaneously more burdensome to code (no static type-checking), more verbose (no elegant, long pipelines of computations), less expressive (no real first class functions - you barely use map/reduce/fold/etc. in python) and slower (as in runtime). Having said all that, I do see how Go fills a gap in the market. You need something that's easy to grok and gets just enough of it right that you can produce fast, type-safe-enough and concurrent programs with somewhat less mutable state than what you may be used to in C. A simple mental model and ease of entry are conceivably great for larger, homogeneous teams.
- nimrody 14y ago
  Can you recommend any open source project that you consider a good example of Haskell usage? (meaning both practical and well-written)
  - edwkar 14y ago
    Well, xmonad is an excellent example :-)
  - pufuwozu 14y ago
    Pandoc: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ XMonad: http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/
  - bru 14y ago
    I'd say xmonad[1]! It is a very light and fast tiling WM. There's also a couple of elegant and blazingly fast web frameworks, such as Yesod, Snap and Happstack[2]. 1: http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ 2: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Web/Comparison_of_Happstack,_Snap_and_Yesod http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Web/Comparison_of_Happsta... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5645168/comparing-haskells-snap-and-yesod-web-frameworks http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5645168/comparing-haskell...
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      Installing xmonad requires several hundred megs of dependencies, so what does it mean for it to be light? Low memory footprint?
      - antihero 14y ago
        Pretty much. Hard disk space is still cheaper than RAM, so I think it's a good tradeoff. Plus those dependencies can be used for lots of other things.
- icebraining 14y ago
  no real first class functions - you barely use map/reduce/fold/etc. in python Can you expand on this?
papsosouid 14y ago
I'm in the same boat as ozataman, go feels like a huge step backwards to me because I use haskell. My interest in programming languages is roughly 0% academic in nature. I use haskell primarily for web development (also random stuff like parsing log files, automating deployments, etc). I use it for these things because the practical benefits of such a high level language are so good, using anything else is painful.

DanWaterworth 14y ago

Haskell isn't just used in academia. It's used a Facebook for example, and no-one would accuse Facebook of being an academic company.

cpeterso 14y ago

And C/C++ is by developers to implement Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Go, C, and C++. :)

pjmlp 14y ago
Actually there are Java and C# compilers implemented on the own language.

ozataman 14y ago

Not at all. In fact about 95% of all Haskell I write - and I write quite a bit - is for commercial stuff, ranging all the way across large-ish (not quite google-scale, yet) scale computation, distributed systems, machine learning, modeling/simulations and web development. More academic feeling stuff like parsing and DSLs are just the cherries on top (though even those were for commercial uses). I'll admit Haskell has a steep learning curve, but once you're there, all this stuff Go is said to do real well feels fairly lackluster compared to what you can find in Haskell-land. What's built into Go can be achieved at the library level in Haskell. As a result, we keep seeing better and better manifestations of key ideas in the library space. Examples include Cloud Haskell, many, many concurrency libraries, STM, Parallel Haskell, many constant-space data streaming libraries (pipes, conduits, enumerators, ...), several excellent parsing libraries (parsec, attoparsec, trifecta, ...), etc. As a side note, I used to do lots of python/ruby - I really can't anymore. They feel simultaneously more burdensome to code (no static type-checking), more verbose (no elegant, long pipelines of computations), less expressive (no real first class functions - you barely use map/reduce/fold/etc. in python) and slower (as in runtime). Having said all that, I do see how Go fills a gap in the market. You need something that's easy to grok and gets just enough of it right that you can produce fast, type-safe-enough and concurrent programs with somewhat less mutable state than what you may be used to in C. A simple mental model and ease of entry are conceivably great for larger, homogeneous teams.

nimrody 14y ago
Can you recommend any open source project that you consider a good example of Haskell usage? (meaning both practical and well-written)
- edwkar 14y ago
  Well, xmonad is an excellent example :-)
- pufuwozu 14y ago
  Pandoc: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ XMonad: http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/
- bru 14y ago
  I'd say xmonad[1]! It is a very light and fast tiling WM. There's also a couple of elegant and blazingly fast web frameworks, such as Yesod, Snap and Happstack[2]. 1: http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ 2: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Web/Comparison_of_Happstack,_Snap_and_Yesod http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Web/Comparison_of_Happsta... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5645168/comparing-haskells-snap-and-yesod-web-frameworks http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5645168/comparing-haskell...
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Installing xmonad requires several hundred megs of dependencies, so what does it mean for it to be light? Low memory footprint?
    - antihero 14y ago
      Pretty much. Hard disk space is still cheaper than RAM, so I think it's a good tradeoff. Plus those dependencies can be used for lots of other things.
icebraining 14y ago
no real first class functions - you barely use map/reduce/fold/etc. in python Can you expand on this?

papsosouid 14y ago

I'm in the same boat as ozataman, go feels like a huge step backwards to me because I use haskell. My interest in programming languages is roughly 0% academic in nature. I use haskell primarily for web development (also random stuff like parsing log files, automating deployments, etc). I use it for these things because the practical benefits of such a high level language are so good, using anything else is painful.