[Haskell-cafe] XmlSerializer.deserialize?

[Hugh Perkins]

On 6/26/07, Udo Stenzel <u.stenzel at web.de> wrote:
>
> That's another way of saying that the truly powerful features are
> missing from C#...
>

Hi Udo,

Genuine question: please could you tell me what are the truly powerful
features of Haskell?

My own personal interest comes from a presentation by Tim Sweenie (Unreal 3
Engine), where he discusses some of the ways that Haskell may help solve the
threading issues that currently are the Big Problem in computing right now.

A friend of mine told me that they're also useful for mission-critical
implementations where you want to mathematically prove that the program wont
crash etc.  Unfortunately it seems Haskell isnt totally perfect for
mission-critical applications because (a) it is hard to predict memory usage
(b) it's not real-time (eg garbage-collector might kick in just when it
would be an appropriate time to fire those booster rockets.... ?)

I'm basically a C# developer looking around for ways to solve threading.
I'm interested in a few things:
- solutions that might work in C#
- solutions that could be integrated into C# later on
- solutions that work in other languages

Haskell looks like it could possibly "solve" threading at some point in the
near future, or at least make a dent into threading issues.  Given that
Simon Peyton Jones is (a) heavily involved in the birth and development of
Haskell (b) works at Microsoft Research, there's a decent chance that
anything he gets working will be integrated into C# in the future.

As far as C# integration goes, I'd guess some way of marking classes/methods
"Pure", and having the compiler enforce this.  Remember that the average
programmer does not have a phd, or even a degree, so anything that requires
formal mathematical training will *not* be adopted by a mainstream
programming language, but most of the maths can probably be abstracted away.

Anyway, getting back to my question, there's a whole slew of articles around
saying that no-one uses Haskell because they're too stupid.  That's
certainly an argument, but it possibly lacks a certain objectivity ;-)

So... what do you see as the "Killer Advantages" that make Haskell stand out
from the pack?
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