[Haskell-cafe] Haskell versus F#, OCaml, et. al. ...

Jon Harrop jonathandeanharrop at googlemail.com
Tue Sep 30 10:33:37 EDT 2008


On Tuesday 30 September 2008 11:53:02 Manlio Perillo wrote:
> Galchin, Vasili ha scritto:
> > Hello,
> >
> >        Frank mode on ... ;^) In terms of functionality, where is Haskell
> > superior vs inferior to ML, Caml, OCaml, F#, Erlang, etc.? E.g. in terms
> > of library functionality?
>
> The "advantage" of F# is that you get all the .NET framework (but this
> leaves me some doubts, it is not possible to write an optimal framework
> that needs to be accessed by different languages).

Most of the problems I encounter are not due to cross-language impedance 
mismatches but, rather, to poor design. For example, the Task Parallel 
Library correctly uses higher-order functions to represent data parallel 
aggregate operations despite being language agnostic (C# is a functional 
language now, after all) but Windows Presentation Foundations makes pens (an 
encapsulation of the color and width of a line) thread unsafe for no reason 
whatsoever which goes a long way to undermining the reliability of GUI code.

At least in the case of OCaml, my impression is that the libraries are far 
better designed and, consequently, much more productive to use.

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e


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