[Haskell-cafe] Haskell not ready for Foo [was: Re: Hypothetical Haskell job in New York]

[John A. De Goes]

Hi John,

Take two examples I gave up getting to work: a Haskell wrapper for a  
popular GUI library; and a Haskell wrapper for a database. I  
understand the former has a new team of developers, so perhaps it's  
time to revisit the library. Then again, writing 5000 line GUIs in an  
imperative style in a Haskell program just doesn't seem very appealing  
to me. And that's one of the problem with FFI-based libraries: it  
exposes the functionality (when it works), but in a strictly  
imperative way.

Selection bias applies to us both. To quote myself, "Which means your  
statements come from your experience, and my statements come from my  
experience, and the truth is probably somewhere in between."

Regards,

John

On Jan 9, 2009, at 1:42 PM, John Goerzen wrote:

> John A. De Goes wrote:
>>
>> Hi Austin,
>>
>> How do you know it's not your experience with FFI code that isn't
>> biased? As far as I know, there has been no systematic attempt to
>> document whether pure Haskell or FFI-based libraries are better  
>> designed
>> and better maintained. Which means your statements come from your
>> experience, and my statements come from my experience, and the  
>> truth is
>> probably somewhere in between.
>>
>> In my experience, FFI code is often based on bulk translation of C
>> header files into the IO monad. It requires an exact version of a
>> library to work (usually much older than the current), it does not
>> compile out of the box, there's scant documentation, and very little
>> high-level design has been imposed on the low-level C interface  
>> (may as
>> well use C!). Exceptions to this rule, there are, but as I said  
>> before,
>> my experience leads me to believe they *are* exceptions to a  
>> *general* rule.
>
> Which libraries are you talking about?  I haven't ever used *any* like
> that, as far as I know.
>
> Current libraries almost always do build right out of the box with
> standard cabal commands.
>
> Maybe part of what you state was accurate a few years ago, but right  
> now?
>
> As far as selection bias is concerned, that would apply equally well  
> to
> both of us, would it not?
>
> -- John

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