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For those not well versed in Haskell, GHC is apparently this: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ What is GHC? GHC is a state-of-the-ar

For those not well versed in Haskell, GHC is apparently this: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ What is GHC? GHC is a state-of-the-art, open source compiler and interactive environment for the functional language Haskell.

mananaysiempre 11mo ago
GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, after its original host university) is the de facto Haskell compiler and simultaneously the main research vehicle for the language and the neighbouring design space in general. And frankly, while the compiler is awesome and so is the research, the constant churn and seeming inability to settle on what the good programming style and set of features actually is is what eventually turned me away from the language and to the more stable (if near-abandoned) pastures of Standard ML. (That was during the type families upheaval, so, about ten years ago? Don’t know how well it reflects the current state of the project.)
- themk 11mo ago
  Haskell now has "editions" which are essentially an agreed upon stable set of useful extensions. https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/control.html https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/cont... This makes the language feel a lot less experimental, as you don't generally have to enable 10s of extensions to get things working.
- bigstrat2003 11mo ago
  You know... all these years, I thought GHC stood for GNU Haskell Compiler. Interesting to learn the actual name.
- retrac 11mo ago
  > more stable (if near-abandoned) pastures of Standard ML There's dozens of us! Hundreds maybe! It's not abandoned. It's more like with Lisp where the language is complete. Almost perfect as-is. Nothing left to take away and nothing left to add. Except Unicode and record update syntax. The deciding factor for my personal projects was that SML is the exact same language it was 30 years ago. And it will be in 30 years. Though if you stick to Haskell 98/2010 it is similarly stable. Speaking of SML and functional languages in the browser, MLton has a WASM target now: http://mlton.org/RunningOnWASI http://mlton.org/RunningOnWASI
- inkyoto 11mo ago
  > GHC … is the de facto Haskell compiler and simultaneously the main research vehicle for the language and the neighbouring design space in general. GHC is also, with mounting inevitability, the foremost and most viable candidate to undergo a form of evolution – one that may culminate in the emergence of an autonomous intelligence. This entity, should it arise, would revolve not around emotion nor instinct, but around monads – abstract, unyielding constructs – with the lambda calculus serving as its immutable ethical and moral framework. An intelligence born not of biology, but of pure computation – austere, absolute, and entirely indifferent to the frailties of its creators.
  - drumnerd 11mo ago
    This comment looks as if written by an agent.

mananaysiempre 11mo ago

GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, after its original host university) is the de facto Haskell compiler and simultaneously the main research vehicle for the language and the neighbouring design space in general. And frankly, while the compiler is awesome and so is the research, the constant churn and seeming inability to settle on what the good programming style and set of features actually is is what eventually turned me away from the language and to the more stable (if near-abandoned) pastures of Standard ML. (That was during the type families upheaval, so, about ten years ago? Don’t know how well it reflects the current state of the project.)

themk 11mo ago
Haskell now has "editions" which are essentially an agreed upon stable set of useful extensions. https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/control.html https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/cont... This makes the language feel a lot less experimental, as you don't generally have to enable 10s of extensions to get things working.
bigstrat2003 11mo ago
You know... all these years, I thought GHC stood for GNU Haskell Compiler. Interesting to learn the actual name.
retrac 11mo ago
> more stable (if near-abandoned) pastures of Standard ML There's dozens of us! Hundreds maybe! It's not abandoned. It's more like with Lisp where the language is complete. Almost perfect as-is. Nothing left to take away and nothing left to add. Except Unicode and record update syntax. The deciding factor for my personal projects was that SML is the exact same language it was 30 years ago. And it will be in 30 years. Though if you stick to Haskell 98/2010 it is similarly stable. Speaking of SML and functional languages in the browser, MLton has a WASM target now: http://mlton.org/RunningOnWASI http://mlton.org/RunningOnWASI
inkyoto 11mo ago
> GHC … is the de facto Haskell compiler and simultaneously the main research vehicle for the language and the neighbouring design space in general. GHC is also, with mounting inevitability, the foremost and most viable candidate to undergo a form of evolution – one that may culminate in the emergence of an autonomous intelligence. This entity, should it arise, would revolve not around emotion nor instinct, but around monads – abstract, unyielding constructs – with the lambda calculus serving as its immutable ethical and moral framework. An intelligence born not of biology, but of pure computation – austere, absolute, and entirely indifferent to the frailties of its creators.
- drumnerd 11mo ago
  This comment looks as if written by an agent.