Hiring and porting

[Thomas Johnsson]

Mark Carroll writes:
 > [..]
 > However, I do fear that Ashley's correct in suggesting that you'd probably
 > need to rewrite everything to sensibly translate the Haskell to C or Java
 > or whatever, and it is both reasonable and plausible that some larger
 > clients will demand use of a more mainstream language in anything that we
 > deliver to them so that they don't rely on us for maintenance. So, first
 > we have to figure out if we should use Haskell at all, because a likely
 > need for a non-trivial port in the future could easily negate, in time and
 > cost, the initial productivity benefits we might gain from Haskell.

Could, yes; likely, no. It makes very good sense use Haskell as a prototyping language
even if the final product, to be maintained by the customer, has to be rewritten 
into another language, for performance or maintenance reasons, or whatever.
In the process one would (hopefully) have produced a better design, requiring 
less maintenance in the long run. At least that is what we FP afficionados claim.

-- Thomas