[Haskell-cafe] What *not* to use Haskell for

[Jeremy Shaw]

At Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:41:48 -0500,
sam lee wrote:
> 
> I haven't found multitrack audio recording applications written in
> Haskell. These are usually written in C++ using Jack audio or ASIO.
> This probably means that it is not a good idea to write real time
> audio applications in Haskell at the moment.

There are at least two Haskell bindings to JACK. I wrote one of
them. The big issue is (no surprise) garbage collection. Audio stuff
can generate a lot of garbage fast if you aren't careful. And the
stop-the-world collection can happen at unfortunate times.

The uvector library might help things -- but ultimately Haskell would
need a more realtime friendly garbage collector. 

So, realtime audio can be done in Haskell today, but is is definitely
fragile at best.

- jeremy