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balloot | 11 years ago

I am increasingly convinced that Haskell only exists so that people who know it can pat themselves on the back for being wonderful.

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coldtea|11 years ago

With the exception of pandoc, I don't recall seeing anything particularly impressive from the Haskell camp.

(Btw, this, actual stuff people use, is how I measure programming languages -- this metric takes into account communities, libraries, practical issues, etc all together, and ties them with practical results. It's my version of "let the market decide").

cageface|11 years ago

Darcs used to be the poster child for Haskell but then somebody came along and wrote a much better DVCS in C, of all languages. Draw your own conclusions...

scribu|11 years ago

I think you're forgetting QuickCheck, which has been ported to many other languages.

jeremiep|11 years ago

xmonad also comes to mind.

But you're talking more about products than programming languages. Haskell contributed a LOT to programming theory.

Your every day coding is most likely using things coming directly from Haskell without you knowing it.

akurilin|11 years ago

There are a few startups out there who use it as their core tech. It's a sweet spot because you don't have any legacy code to support and it allows you to slap together fairly stable code fairly fast, at least once you get to know the basic tools. E.g. picking up Yesod (which, to be fair, isn't something you'll do in a couple hours) gives you all of the niceties and rapid prototyping of a tool like Rails, plus the obsession with type safety that gives you that handy line of technical credit.

saosebastiao|11 years ago

I can't imagine ever using Haskell for a startup. Unlike pg's python paradox, the only programmers I could imagine applying would be programming language theorists, toy programmers, and people who think they are productive (because arrows!), without ever having built anything ever. I would only do it if it meant I could hire John Macfarlane.

RivieraKid|11 years ago

Yeah, I've got a similar impression. The only 2 things I care about are 1) productivity (time to finish a task) 2) how pleasurable is it to use a language.

And I just don't find Haskell (or Lisp) to be as productive as many would suggest, even if you adjust for matureness of the ecosystem. (Note: I have a moderate experience with Lisp, very little experience with Haskell and these days mostly program in Java, Julia and Python.)

akurilin|11 years ago

I wrote the core of our system in Clojure a couple of years ago, which is pretty high in productivity and actually quite pleasant to work with. Unfortunately as the scale goes up (hundreds of web application routes, sharing code among multiple projects etc) it doesn't feel nearly as nice anymore, and having static typing turns out to be pretty handy.

Haskell to me felt exactly like what you described: I could get stuff done fast because of how few head-scratchers I'd experience. This is mostly due to type mismatches, and how much more well thought our my design needed to be upfront. I also really enjoyed the language because I could express fairly complex thoughts in a very succinct, and yet very readable fashion, mostly thanks to types being explicit and enforced at compile time. Code reuse and sharing across multiple applications is also a breeze, which is absolutely key once you get past the "single Rails app" stage and you start getting into two digits worth of tools, services and applications.

jbeja|11 years ago

"I have a moderate experience with Lisp, very little experience with Haskell and these days mostly program in Java, Julia and Python"

I despise that people give their 2 cents for something they haven't experienced much.

imanaccount247|11 years ago

>I just don't find Haskell ... to be as productive as many would suggest

>I have ... very little experience with Haskell

So, how would you know?

ExpiredLink|11 years ago

Well, Haskell is number 49 of 50 on the current Tiobe Index.

copx|11 years ago

Haskell exists to write CS papers about it. It being the new LISP is just a side effect (pun intended).