[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANNOUNCE: Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC) -- first release

[Lennart Augustsson]

I agree in principle; you should really implement the full Haskell98
if you claim to be a Haskell implementation.
In the particular case of n+k I don't care, since I never use them and
they are slated for removal in Hakell'.

  -- Lennart

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Jon Fairbairn
<jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Achim Schneider <barsoap at web.de> writes:
>
>> Jon Fairbairn <jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> atze at cs.uu.nl writes:
>>>
>>> >        Utrecht Haskell Compiler -- first release, version 1.0.0
>>> >        ========================================================
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > The UHC team is happy to announce the first public release of the
>>> > Utrecht Haskell Compiler (UHC). UHC supports almost all Haskell98
>>> > features
>>>
>>> Why? Is there something about Haskell 98 that's hard to
>>> implement?
>>>
>> Insanity. I doubt anyone is going to miss n+k patterns:
>
> That (taken with the followup from Richard O'Keefe saying he
> does use them) underlines my point, really. What follows is
> specific to Haskell, but the general point applies to most
> languages I've encountered.
>
> I have no love for n+k patterns, but they are part of
> Haskell98 -- and were the subject of protracted arguments
> for and against them before the Report was finished (I was
> against them, if I remember correctly). Any implementation
> claiming to be of Haskell98 should have them, whether or not
> the implementor likes them, because otherwise someone will
> come along with a valid Haskell98 programme and it won't
> compile, so they'll have to hack it around. This sort of
> thing (and resulting #ifdef all over the place) wastes far
> more programmer time in the end (assuming the compiler
> becomes popular) than it would take to implement the
> feature.
>
> It's not an implementor's place to make such decisions --
> they can legitimately say "this feature sucks" and tell the
> next Haskell committee so. If they care enough about it,
> they can lobby or get on that next committee, but the
> arguments for n+k patterns /in Haskell98/ were done long
> ago.
>
>
> --
> Jón Fairbairn                                 Jon.Fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk
> http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html  (updated 2009-01-31)
>
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