[Haskell-cafe] In-place modification

[Sebastian Sylvan]

On 10/07/07, Alex Queiroz <asandroq at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hallo,
>
> On 7/10/07, Hugh Perkins <hughperkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/8/07, Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > > I was wittering on about stream fusion and how great it is, and I got a
> > > message from Mr C++.
> > >
> > > (Mr C++ develops commercial games, and is obsessed with performance. For
> > > him, the only way to achieve the best performance is to have total
> > > control over every minute detail of the implementation. He sees Haskell
> > > is a stupid language that can never be fast. It seems he's not alone...)
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Just a random observation: the competition for Haskell is not really C or
> > C++.  C is basically dead;
>
>      20 years from now people will still be saying this...

I highly doubt that. For two reasons:
1. People can only cling to unproductive and clumsy tools for so long
(we don't write much assembly any more...). Capitalism works to ensure
this; people who are willing to switch to  more efficient tools will
put the rest out of business (if they really are more efficient).
2. The many-core revolution that's on the horizon.

While I personally think that the productivity argument should be
enough to "make the switch", the killer-app (the app that will kill C,
that is :-)) is concurrency. C is just not a tractable tool to program
highly concurrent programs, unless the problem happens to be highly
amenable to concurrency (web servers etc.). We need *something* else.
It may not be Haskell, but it will be something (and it will probably
be closer to Haskell than C!).

-- 
Sebastian Sylvan
+44(0)7857-300802
UIN: 44640862