[pooya72]

If I had to choose the three big factors that contributed to my gradual loss of interest in Haskell, they were these:

* the stylistic neophilia that celebrates esoteric code but makes maintenance a chore

* the awkward tooling that makes working with Haskell in a day-to-day sense clunkier

* the constant changes that require sporadic but persistent attention and cause regular breakages

Valid points. Back in 2010-2012, I spent a lot of time learning Haskell. The language itself is great, but the documentation and tooling was challenging to work with. The community went from Cabal (and the infamous Cabal hell) to Stack, and back to Cabal. Overall, the situation has improved.

On the other hand, other programming languages have incorporated elements of functional programming. Take Java, for instance. It has added features like Streams, functions, lambdas, algebraic data types, records, and pattern matching. While Java's syntax isn't as elegant as Haskell's, it does include the fundamental concepts of functional programming.

[pyrale]

> Take Java, for instance. It has added features like Streams, functions, lambdas, algebraic data types, records, and pattern matching.

In a doomed attempt to escape the prison in which they were locked, the inmates defiled their language and adopted grotesque rituals inspired by the light they saw through the bars of narrow windows. They created an endless pit of suffering of their own, which is made tolerable only because the light shafts are too high for them to see the colors created by light on trees outside.

Those that came from outside quickly lose sanity, constantly being by torn between a dialect adapted to self-imposed darkness, and a dialect that could thrive in the light but is stiffled there.

[nobleach]

Perhaps, but what you may not understand is that not ALL developers _want_ a purely functional language. For some, things like Kotlin hit a sweet-spot. One can lean a bit more into a functional style, or they can lean more into an OO style and it's acceptable. Some are very interested in thinking in terms of Functors, Applicatives, Readers, etc... some just want map/filter/reduce. That's what the Streams API did for Java devs. For me, Haskell isn't "the goal". It's simply one way of solving problem-sets.

[harry8]

yeah sure, maybe, but when I look at software i can install which has a purpose other than programming a computer there's a metric f.ton() written in Java (a language I don't like much) and we can count the items on our fingers written in haskell (a language I greatly prefer for aesthetic reasons).

Xmonad, pandoc and there are more. Let's list everything we can.

We can scream at anyone who points this out or face up to it and work out /why/ and how to actually /fix/ that issue.

When i mention it here it's about 50/50 which way it goes.

[goto11]

Weird then, that amazing software like Minecraft is written in Java, while Haskell seem to be mostly used for writing monad tutorials.

[cryptonector]

Funny to call voluntary insane asylum residents "inmates".

[freilanzer]

Poetic truth.

[dgb23]

Efficient immutable data structures are more important for FP than most of the features you listed. What is Java providing there?

[xwowsersx]

> The community went from Cabal (and the infamous Cabal hell) to Stack, and back to Cabal.

I didn't know this. I've been away from Haskell for a couple of years. When I last used the language, Stack seemed like smoothest experience and solved many of the pain points with Cabal. The community went back to Cabal? What did I miss? :)

[consilient]

> The community went back to Cabal? What did I miss? :)

Cabal got better, stack stayed the same. It's more a cultural divide than anything at this point.

[aetherspawn]

I currently don’t use Haskell but maintain an old Haskell package from a failed startup of mine that has some commercial usage by other orgs. I have been assuming everyone is using stack? I’m also interested to hear what is going on here

[AnimalMuppet]

I mis-read that as "stylistic necrophilia", which... rather changed the meaning.