[Haskell-cafe] Re: statep haskell-lang [was: Re: Hoogle and Network.Socket]

[Achim Schneider]

"John A. De Goes" <john at n-brain.net> wrote:

> What do you mean by "progress"? I noted before that there are  
> tradeoffs. Constraining the evolution of the language in backward  
> compatible ways leads to substantial improvements in tools,
> libraries, and the speed of compiled code. That's progress in several
> dimensions -- just not along the dimension of "language".
>
I disagree. Backwards compatibility can be the very reason no
progress _can_ be made in the areas you mention. The C toolchain was
and is a mess for anything but small, uniform, single-platform
programs, things like valgrind of course outperform plain lint in a
variety of ways, but are still hacks around the language's major flaws
(And I'm speaking as a C-fan, here). Further breakthroughs in C
compiler technology will require stalin-like brute force and library
support... well, did you ever use yacc or libxml and compared them to
Haskell solutions?

Java generics are broken by design, for the questionable benefit of
backwards compatibility. Leave those Bad Decisions to language
communities who don't care about Doing It Right. "Right" being a
technological measure here, not how well politics sell to accountants.

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