[Haskell-cafe] Why Exotic Languages Are Not Mainstream

[Jason Dagit]

On 8/11/06, Nicolas Frisby <nicolas.frisby at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe it could also catch errors in my cafe emails...
>
> > sqrs l = map sqr l
> >   where sqr x = x*x

Would you really want to write your emails in VisualStudio? ;-)

>
> On 8/11/06, Nicolas Frisby <nicolas.frisby at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks for the pointers, but I think I'm looking for type information
> > specific to my program. The VisualHaskell feature of which I am
> > envious is the ability to tell me the type of any identifier in my
> > program.

VisualHaskell can do this, *if* your program type checks.  I'm hoping
in a later version that ghc can be made more tolerant of errors for
interactive use.  Sometimes I want to know the type of something but I
have an error (such as an unfinished line) somewhere else in the
program.  When this happens I often insert "undefined" in the trouble
spots just so my program type checks.  After I double check the type
of something I go back to work and remove the undefined spots.  This
is okay, but for every feature I like about visual studio I miss two
things from emacs (perhaps I just know it better).

[snip]

> > And, of course, I'd like this functionality in a multi-platform editor.

Look at the eclipse plugin eclipse-fp.  The main things I get out of
VisualHaskell these days are the automatic generation of my cabal
files and the updated COM library.  I find myself using emacs and ghci
fairly often.  Also, I'm getting to where I can hack my own cabal
files without much hassle, so really I'm just using it for the updated
COM library.

Jason