5 ms·

> C# developers get shit done. Yes, and that says a lot about the final quality too, no? We could say the same about Perl/PHP/Java/C++ and then we're sitting i

by pnathan 13y ago

> C# developers get shit done. Yes, and that says a lot about the final quality too, no? We could say the same about Perl/PHP/Java/C++ and then we're sitting in the same horrible morass we live in today, because people settle for minimally bad code produced as fast as possible. Good, cheap, fast. Pick 2. Almost invariably: Cheap+fast are the picked results.

pron 13y ago
> and then we're sitting in the same horrible morass we live in today But you see, this is the claim that requires substantial evidence. Let's assume we're in a mess. If Haskell is one way out of it, as some people claim, why won't they show us the way? They've had more than 20 years to do it. There are enough Haskell developers out there to give us this pesky evidence we need. And yet we've seen absolutely none. There are way more impressive BASIC programs out there than Haskell programs. I think that there are two reasons for that: 1) People involved in PL research are less interested in programs that aren't compilers, and 2) languages like Haskell make certain tradeoffs that their designers fail to see, and as a result their advantages fall way short of the claims they make.
- pnathan 13y ago
  I don't even understand your question. My internet is filled with half-baked webapps with bad errors and riddled with stupid security vulnerabilities, many of which can be defined to not occur in an adequately designed tech stack. Desktop programs work through dint of manpower, crufty testing environments, and users-as-QA. What exactly are you looking for? Web app frameworks? they exist. database connectors? they exist. mathematical proofs relating to correctness? they exist, in abundance. data structures arcane and common? they exist. regex libs? they exist. Sophisticated programs running sophisticated systems? They exist, and you won't hear about them except as a rumor on message boards... If you mean, "is there going to be a big marketing campaign to make me and my manager feel comfortable"... I doubt it.
  - pron 13y ago
    > Sophisticated programs running sophisticated systems? They exist Not really. Well, far less than in all those horrible, unusable languages. All I'm saying is, if Haskell makes writing correct code so easy, where is it? There should be tons of it now. It should be practically everywhere. In fact, it should be financially stupid to do anything in any language other than Haskell. So where are all the companies making a fortune by betting on Haskell?
    - pnathan 13y ago
      You're arguing from perfection. The reality is that most companies choose "fast+cheap" and usually incur significant technical debt which is paid off through throwing bodies at the problem. It is usually considered better to hire 3 people who are mediocre than 1 person who is very skilled. This is extremely well addressed in the software engineering literature going back to the late 60s. It's also the case that software engineering is very conservative: "Don't change ANYTHING" is the default state of the industry with regards to practices.
      - Locke1689 13y ago
        I don't buy this either. If this were true you'd still see, for lack of a better term, the "redis" of Haskell. You can't argue that antirez skimped on development or that he isn't talented enough. Where is the redis of Haskell? The ffmpeg of ML? There's something else at play here.
        pnathan 13y ago
        I think the simple answer is that a lot of problems people consider useful are intellectually not terribly interesting. Among other things, if it's been done before, the cool factor drops off a good deal. e.g., I run a tutorial site for common lisp. One request has been for 'example of web framework'. At some point, I'll do it (it's useful), but my heart at the moment is in implementing an extensible indexing system for n-dimensional tuples. It's a good deal more esoteric and a lot more fun than screwing with http/html.
- dangirsh 13y ago
  Show me a BASIC program as impressive as any of: - Elm's Time Travelling Debugger: http://debug.elm-lang.org/ http://debug.elm-lang.org/ - Pandoc: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc https://github.com/jgm/pandoc - XMonad: http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ - (GHC, should really count)
platz 13y ago
It's interesting. There's so much more C# code out there, but I wonder about the lifetime of that code, and when it will be swept under the rug (i.e. if javascript eats the enterprise). Haskell seems to disseminate ideas rather than code. It even disseminated LINQ into C#. Perhaps this makes the lack of volume of production Haskell code less stinging because it has contributed to languages in other ways? There's kind of an upside to this as well, because Haskell isn't entrenched in industry, it's still free to make changes and grow the language (i.e. Applicative becomes superclass of Monad), although this gap may be starting to slowly close with the recent popularity.
yongjik 13y ago
More often than not, it is: Good, existent, fast. Pick 2.

by pnathan 13y ago

pron 13y ago

> and then we're sitting in the same horrible morass we live in today But you see, this is the claim that requires substantial evidence. Let's assume we're in a mess. If Haskell is one way out of it, as some people claim, why won't they show us the way? They've had more than 20 years to do it. There are enough Haskell developers out there to give us this pesky evidence we need. And yet we've seen absolutely none. There are way more impressive BASIC programs out there than Haskell programs. I think that there are two reasons for that: 1) People involved in PL research are less interested in programs that aren't compilers, and 2) languages like Haskell make certain tradeoffs that their designers fail to see, and as a result their advantages fall way short of the claims they make.

pnathan 13y ago
I don't even understand your question. My internet is filled with half-baked webapps with bad errors and riddled with stupid security vulnerabilities, many of which can be defined to not occur in an adequately designed tech stack. Desktop programs work through dint of manpower, crufty testing environments, and users-as-QA. What exactly are you looking for? Web app frameworks? they exist. database connectors? they exist. mathematical proofs relating to correctness? they exist, in abundance. data structures arcane and common? they exist. regex libs? they exist. Sophisticated programs running sophisticated systems? They exist, and you won't hear about them except as a rumor on message boards... If you mean, "is there going to be a big marketing campaign to make me and my manager feel comfortable"... I doubt it.
- pron 13y ago
  > Sophisticated programs running sophisticated systems? They exist Not really. Well, far less than in all those horrible, unusable languages. All I'm saying is, if Haskell makes writing correct code so easy, where is it? There should be tons of it now. It should be practically everywhere. In fact, it should be financially stupid to do anything in any language other than Haskell. So where are all the companies making a fortune by betting on Haskell?
  - pnathan 13y ago
    You're arguing from perfection. The reality is that most companies choose "fast+cheap" and usually incur significant technical debt which is paid off through throwing bodies at the problem. It is usually considered better to hire 3 people who are mediocre than 1 person who is very skilled. This is extremely well addressed in the software engineering literature going back to the late 60s. It's also the case that software engineering is very conservative: "Don't change ANYTHING" is the default state of the industry with regards to practices.
    - Locke1689 13y ago
      I don't buy this either. If this were true you'd still see, for lack of a better term, the "redis" of Haskell. You can't argue that antirez skimped on development or that he isn't talented enough. Where is the redis of Haskell? The ffmpeg of ML? There's something else at play here.
      - pnathan 13y ago
        I think the simple answer is that a lot of problems people consider useful are intellectually not terribly interesting. Among other things, if it's been done before, the cool factor drops off a good deal. e.g., I run a tutorial site for common lisp. One request has been for 'example of web framework'. At some point, I'll do it (it's useful), but my heart at the moment is in implementing an extensible indexing system for n-dimensional tuples. It's a good deal more esoteric and a lot more fun than screwing with http/html.
dangirsh 13y ago
Show me a BASIC program as impressive as any of: - Elm's Time Travelling Debugger: http://debug.elm-lang.org/ http://debug.elm-lang.org/ - Pandoc: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc https://github.com/jgm/pandoc - XMonad: http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ - (GHC, should really count)

platz 13y ago

It's interesting. There's so much more C# code out there, but I wonder about the lifetime of that code, and when it will be swept under the rug (i.e. if javascript eats the enterprise). Haskell seems to disseminate ideas rather than code. It even disseminated LINQ into C#. Perhaps this makes the lack of volume of production Haskell code less stinging because it has contributed to languages in other ways? There's kind of an upside to this as well, because Haskell isn't entrenched in industry, it's still free to make changes and grow the language (i.e. Applicative becomes superclass of Monad), although this gap may be starting to slowly close with the recent popularity.

yongjik 13y ago

More often than not, it is: Good, existent, fast. Pick 2.