[Haskell-cafe] #haskell works

Tim Chevalier catamorphism at gmail.com
Sat Dec 15 18:29:13 EST 2007


On 12/15/07, Bulat Ziganshin <bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> i see your point - it's easy to implement everything in GHC. probably
> its authors was sleeping last 15 years :)
>

As you well know, implementing things in GHC isn't always easy for
people who aren't named "Simon", and people who are named "Simon" are
often busy not so much with sleeping as with coming up with things
that will lead to new papers rather than implementing straightforward
things that are already pointed out in existing papers :-) (I know
it's dangerous to call optimzations "straightforward" before you try
to implement them, but even so.)

> and ghc was so genuine that it was implemented general case without
> implementing special one :)
>

Isn't implementing the general case and leaving the users to use it to
implement the special ones what functional programming is about? :-)

> > That's not true in C. The simplicity of Haskell (or rather,
> > Core) means it's easy to implement a lot of things with a great deal
> > of generality, an advantage that gcc doesn't have.
>
> Core language has the same complexity for generating good code as C, C-- or LLVM
>

Sorry, I don't know what you mean here; I assume by "complexity" you
don't mean "time complexity" or "space complexity", and anyway, I
don't know what those would mean as applied to a programming language.
Care to elaborate?

> you may believe in what you want. i prefer to say about real
> situation. if it will be possible to quickly write good Haskell
> compiler, it was be written many years ago
>

As others have pointed out, I think that's false. Resources, financial
and human, have been thrown at C compilation that have not been thrown
at Haskell compilers. As hard-working as the people who work on
Haskell compilers are, there aren't very many of them and none of them
have "writing Haskell compilers" as a job description.

Cheers,
Tim

-- 
Tim Chevalier * catamorphism.org * Often in error, never in doubt
"The blues isn't about feeling better, it's about making other people
feel worse, and making a few bucks while you're at it."  -- Bleeding
Gums Murphy


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