[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Propeganda

[Thomas Davie]

On 23 Aug 2008, at 22:36, Matus Tejiscak wrote:

> On So, 2008-08-23 at 22:16 +0200, Thomas Davie wrote:
>> Today I made an interesting discovery.
>>
>> We all know the benefits of a strong type system, and often tout it  
>> as
>> a major advantage of using Haskell.  The discovery I made, was that C
>> programmer don't realise the implications of that, as this comment
>> highlights:
>>
>> http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=654821&cid=24716845
>>
>> Apparently, no one realises that a SEGFAULT is a type error, just not
>> a very helpful one.
>>
>> Bob
>
> Type errors are useful because they emerge at compile time and prevent
> you from compiling (and running) a broken program. A segfault is a
> runtime error and as such provides no such guide -- it may or may not
> arise and you don't know something's wrong until sigsegv kills your  
> app,
> screws all your data, crashes the airplane etc. (without the  
> possibility
> to tell whether/when it will happen).

I guess I didn't express my point very clearly... That C programmers  
apparently don't realise that a type system that's sound will give  
them something -- i.e. their programmer won't ever segfault.  I wonder  
when we try to advertise Haskell if we should be saying "we can give  
you programs that never segfault", instead of "we have a strong type  
system".

Bob