[Haskell-cafe] Aim Of Haskell

[Tomasz Zielonka]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 03:03:51AM -0500, Mark Goldman wrote:
> I have been keeping up with this thread.  As a user of Haskell for
> comercial purposes, I can say that it does what I want.  The only
> thing currently on my wish-list is some sort of run time debuging.
> (sometimes you want to know how you got to the empty list that you
> took the head of :)  Anyhow, I find haskell more than adequete for my
> programming.  I say this to set up my next statement.  I really don't
> want there to be huge accretions to the language proper.  I understand
> lisp has had a rough go because there wasn't enough standardisation of
> libraries, but on the other hand, I think languages like Java went
> overboard.
> 
> My point, I guess, is that I find haskell to be easy and efficient to
> develop applications with.  It is quite practical.  Also, the academic
> research that goes in to Haskell continues to make it more practical.
> I, for one, do not want the spirit of Haskell to change just to make
> it how people think it would be useful in the comercial world.  It's
> current spirit makes it very useful and rewarding.

Seconded!

I especially agree on the following points:
- Haskell is useful for practical, commercial purposes NOW
- Commercial development gets substantial benefits from academic research
  and the "academic flavour" of Haskell.

If you want a less "academic" language, there are so many to choose from.

Personally, I am sometimes a bit distressed by all those big demands
articulated by newcomers to Haskell world, perhaps because most of the
time these are things completely unneccesary for me (a non-academic
programmer). Please have the humility to take some time to learn
Haskell more, and then *maybe* you will appreciate the way some things
are done.

Best regards
Tomasz