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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 20/10/15 19:35, Gregory Collins
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAHZrzdoUeypkhB_jqbsUwGU2qG-hnAkweY0aNeMUm228+mQSJw@mail.gmail.com"
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<div class="gmail_extra">On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 7:45 AM, Jeremy
<span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:voldermort@hotmail.com" target="_blank">voldermort@hotmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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<div id=":4gs" class="" style="overflow:hidden">I'm
interested in why you think recent changes are making
Haskell a less<br>
viable alternative to mainstream languages.</div>
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[...] Of course, these hypothetical productivity benefits are
extremely difficult to quantify (and Lord knows, we've tried),
but that's not at all true for the "con" arguments:</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<ul>
<li>how many Haskell programmers are there in industry? If I
lose my local expert who is trying to push us to use this
thing, can I hire another?</li>
<li>how many lines of code are written in Haskell globally
vs other languages?</li>
<li>how much tooling will I have available to help me if I
choose Haskell vs. a "safer" technology like Java, Python,
or Go?<br>
</li>
<li>how many open source libraries will I have available to
me to handle common tasks, and what is their quality?</li>
<li>how likely am I to encounter bugs in the compiler or
base libraries?</li>
</ul>
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We actually get these questions from potential clients *all the
time* (in particular, everyone asks 1 and 3). I don't always have a
convincing answer.
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cite="mid:CAHZrzdoUeypkhB_jqbsUwGU2qG-hnAkweY0aNeMUm228+mQSJw@mail.gmail.com"
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<div class="gmail_extra">The point Johan is trying to make is
this: if I'm thinking of using Haskell, then I'm taking on a
lot of project risk to get a (hypothetical, difficult to
quantify) X% productivity benefit. If choosing it actually <b>costs</b>
me a (real, obvious, easy to quantify) Y% tax because I have
to invest K hours every other quarter fixing all my programs
to cope with random/spurious changes in the ecosystem and base
libraries, then unless we can clearly convince people that X
>> Y, the rationale for choosing to use it is degraded
or even nullified altogether.<br>
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Not even that. Learning and some tooling costs can be amortized over
time, but a regular and frequent cost tied to upgrades in the
ecosystem may be really hard to estimate in advance. This makes
profit, viability and deadlines, mid-term and long-term, really hard
to estimate and fulfill. (I've also tried, and often failed.)<br>
<br>
If clients (supervisors, project managers, <your company>)
have *any* doubts that using the language may be cost-effective,
they won't go for it.<br>
<br>
Cheers<br>
<br>
Ivan<br>
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