"Excuse me, I think this i my stop..." - Resigning from the Platform

[Mark Lentczner]

I think this is the right time for me to exit:

The truth is, I still can't bring myself to use a version of Haskell post
the Foldable-Traversable-aPocalypse, let alone some future Haskell after
the changes now in the works. My personal machines are all still 7.8. My
personal projects are all pre-FTP. The Haskell I love to code in, the
Haskell I'm passionate about, the Haskell I've advocated for real world
use, and the Haskell I like to teach, is 7.8, pre-FTP.

It's not that I'm dead set against change and evolution in a language, or
even breaking changes. But FTP and beyond are changes that have lost the
balance that Haskell had between abstraction and clarity, between elaborate
and practical engineering. I don't see any restraint going forward, so I'm
getting off the train.

This puts me in an odd position with respect to Haskell Platform: I find
myself building the Platform for a version of Haskell that I don't use.
This isn't healthy for either the Platform or me. Hence, I'm resigning as
release manager.

I am sad because I believed that Haskell's path to much wider adoption was
within reach. Now, especially with the ramping up of the Haskell Prime
committee, which seems preordained to codify FTP and beyond into standard,
we are approaching our Algol 68 moment: Building a major language revision
with less opportunity than it's predecessor.

I'll still see you 'round at meet-ups and conferences. I'll just be coding
with an older accent.

- Mark "mzero" Lentczner
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