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

[Adrian Hey]

Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
> On 2008 Aug 29, at 4:22, Adrian Hey wrote:
>> 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 :-)
> 
> 
> ...but, as he noted, we *do* that until we find the right way to do it.

So what's the problem with doing it *safely*, that is at least until
someone has found the mythic "right way to do it".

Not that anybody has ever been able to offer any rational explanation
of what's *wrong* with the current proposed solution AFAICS.

Regards
--
Adrian Hey