[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Propeganda

[Thomas Davie]

On 23 Aug 2008, at 23:10, Tim Newsham wrote:

>> 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".
>
> That would be overpromissing.  You can definitely get segfaults in
> Haskell.  The obvious example being
>
>  http://codepad.org/Q8cgS6x8
>
> but many less contrived and more unexpected examples arise naturally
> (unfortunately).
>
> By the way, the Java camp has (correctly) been touting this argument  
> for quite a while.

I'd be interested to see your other examples -- because that error is  
not happening in Haskell!  You can't argue that Haskell doesn't give  
you no segfaults, because you can embed a C segfault within Haskell.

Bob