[Haskell-cafe] Building "production stable" software in Haskell

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> Competing packages for XML or DBM is really awful, unless they happen
> to be interface compatible.

Imagine two XML libraries which share the same interface. That implies
that they have exactly the same design criteria, take the same view of
XML files and are pretty much the same in every user visible way. The
only way they can differentiate each other is in performance, so
either:

1) one is ridiculously slow, the other is fast. end result, only one XML library

2) they are the same speed. the user has no benefit, but the
development costs double

DBM's can differentiate themselves on external database support,
Data.Map's can have different amortised costs and are quite simple in
terms of interface. XML is not simple and does not interface to third
party programs. I can think of at least 4 XML libraries, all of which
are quite different. An application that suits tagsoup will not suit
HaXml, and vice versa.

Thanks

Neil