[Haskell-cafe] What's the deal with Clean?

[Richard O'Keefe]

On Nov 4, 2009, at 9:30 AM, Deniz Dogan wrote:
> So what's the deal with Clean? Why is it preferable to Haskell? Why  
> is it not?

(1) Speed.
(2) If you are a Windows developer, the fact that Windows is the primary
     platform and others (even Mac OS, which is historically ironic) are
     second- (or in the case of Solaris) third-class citizens.
(3) Did I mention speed?
(4) It comes with its own IDE.  I don't think it can do anything much  
that
     Haskell tools can't do, but if you don't like looking for things,  
it's
     a help.
(5) Plus of course there's speed.
(6) They're working on a Haskell front end, so you won't actually have  
to
     choose.  (Anyone doing a Clean front end for Haskell?)
(7) Haskell now has bang-patterns so you can specify (a bound on)  
intended
     strictness when you declare a function.  But that's not in  
Haskell 98.
(8) As a result of this, speed is a bit more "declarative" than adding
     $! in strange places.
(9) There's a theorem prover for Clean, called Sparkle.
     Sadly, it's Windows-only, but we all know what most computers on  
the
     planet run, don't we?  (It's probably Symbian, actually.)
(10) And finally, of course, there's speed.  Did I mention that?