[Haskell-cafe] Why purely in haskell?

[Derek Elkins]

On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 15:06 +0000, Dougal Stanton wrote:
> On 09/01/2008, Yu-Teh Shen <shenyute at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I got question about why haskell insist to be a purely FL. I mean is
> > there any feature which is only support by pure?
> 
> Have a look at the ueber-retrospective on Haskell, fifty-five pages of
> all the history and motivation one could possibly want.
> 
> <http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/>
> 
> It's interesting reading, I promise! ;-)

A shorter and lighter and and also interesting and entertaining read is:
http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/haskell-retrospective/index.htm

While the reason Haskell was pure was to support laziness, at this point
though it's safe to say Haskell "insists" on being pure no more than
water "insists" on being wet.