[Haskell-cafe] Re: Why?

[MightyByte]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:50 AM, John D. Earle <JohnDEarle at cox.net> wrote:
> in progress. The Haskell creed appears to be, This is the way so stick to
> it! The idea appears to be that by sticking to the program the problems will
> be overcome in time and we will be left with all the glorious goodness. At

I think this is a bit of a misnomer.  My perception of a "Haskell
creed", if there really is one, is something more along the lines of:

"Purity (also laziness, amongst other things) gives us some desirable
properties.  Let's see how far we can go with these ideas and if we
can use them to solve practical problems."

The Haskell community is not trying to shove these ideas down your
throat.  We're just interested in exploring them.  Before monadic I/O
was introduced, the absence of side effects made practical
applications clumsy if not impossible [1].  But the Haskell
researchers persisted.  It just so happens that now the industry seems
to be taking note of what the Haskell community has accomplished with
careful adherence to these ideas.

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/history-of-haskell/history.pdf