ANNOUNCE: GHC survey results

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Simon,

Tuesday, June 28, 2005, 1:58:13 PM, you wrote:

SM>   http://www.haskell.org/ghc/survey2005-summary.html
SM> There's a lot to take in, but it's an interesting read.  Enjoy!

thank you all, processing all the 600 answers was not easy work :)

i have several comments regarding results of this survey:

1) GHCi compiles to bytecode several times faster than GHC makes
unoptimized compilation. can unoptimized GHC compilation just create
bytecode (as Ocaml does)?

2) is your plans to support x86-64 platform includes Windows (and all
other sorts of Unix), or it's for Linux only?

3) many users complaining about non-compatibility between GHC
versions. if they mean library interfaces changes then how about using
Pesco's library versioning scheme? (see http://www.haskell.org/tmrwiki/EternalCompatibilityInTheory)

4) i definitely will poll for nightly snapshot build for Windows (if
it's possible) and frequent releases of stable versions




i think there is a plans to move toward the "real world". but it
encounter the chicken&egg problem - the commercial programmers don't
want to use Haskell because it's too far-from-earth, and you cannot
make movements toward "real world" because there is almost no voices
from non-academic world. of course i can't monopolize the right to say
over all these programmers. but from my point of view several things
can be done to be closer to commercial programs and programmers:

1) adding OO-like features in O'Haskell style. for readers that don't
know it's about adding new variants to ADT types:

type Figure = Circle ...
type Figure |= Box ...

and adding new fields to existing records:

type Point = {x,y::Int}
type ColoredPoint = Point extended with {c::Color}

imho these extensions are great because it's both in Haskell and C++ style


2) adding "real-world" libraries. i think about libraries for string
processing, regular expression handling, command-line processing,
serializing, ASCIIZ strings, working with filesystem and running external commands,
networking, web-oriented libraries (http/ftp/smtp/pop3,
constructing/deconstructing emails), DBMS access

i enumerated here only working libraries which i seen in MissingH, or
written by Pesco, John Meacham, or Peter Simons


3) may be it is time to include some FFI-generating tool in GHC? many
newcomers have some C/C++ libraries they need to communicate

4) some newcomers wrote what they want to say example programs and
even tutorials in the package. i think that at least links to such
sources/texts can be provided so that a newcomer can easily get a
TASTE of Haskell

5) of course, you must add words about Pugo and Darcs in readme :)
anyway, ADT is a vehicle of progress ;)


-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:bulatz at HotPOP.com