[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Top Level <-

[Adrian Hey]

Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
> 
> On 2008 Aug 28, at 20:45, Adrian Hey wrote:
> 
>> Lennart Augustsson wrote:
>>> If Haskell had always taken the pragmatic path of adding what seems
>>> easiest and most in line with imperative practice it would not be the
>>> language it is today.  It would be Perl, ML, or Java.
>>> The Haskell philosophy has always been to stick it out until someone
>>> comes up with the right solution to a problem rather than picking some
>>> easy way out.
>>
>> BTW, unsafePerformIO seems quite pragmatic and easy to me, so let's
>> not get too snobby about this. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
> 
> 
> It's anything but easy; there are specific rules you need to follow, 
> including use of certain compiler pragmas, to insure it works properly.

Yes, of course. The worst thing about all this is that the single most
common use case AFAICS (the one under discussion) isn't even a "safe"
use. Just pointing out that this pseudo function is certainly not
something one would expect from an organisation as dedicated to the
persuit of perfection as Lennart would have us believe. It's an
expedient hack. Not that I wish to seem ungrateful or anything :-)

Regards
--
Adrian Hey