[Haskell-cafe] Re: Libraries for Commercial Users

[John A. De Goes]

Yes. C is the language of operating systems and browsers and low-level  
system utilities -- not, by and large, the backbone of today's web  
applications. Projects written in C/C++ tend to be ignored in favor of  
those written in Java (Hypertable versus HBase, for example). There  
are exceptions, but there are fewer of them over time. Java's spot in  
the middle tier has overflowed into the bottom tier, as performance  
and community size have increased.

Moreover, C libraries are seldom cross-platform (leading to wasteful  
fiddling and endless frustration), and they are painful to interface  
with due to the requirement for detailed type annotations, which are  
easy to get wrong. JVM is cross-platform, and contains sufficient  
typing information to permit one to write something like, "import  
foreign jvm java.list.Collection", and have typed access to the whole  
class and all of its methods.

Regards,

John A. De Goes
N-Brain, Inc.
The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101

On Oct 8, 2009, at 1:00 PM, Gregory Crosswhite wrote:

> Out of curiosity, why do you think that porting Haskell to the JVM  
> would make such a large difference?  Haskell can already interface  
> with C libraries;  are there really so many commercially vital  
> libraries that are JVM-only?
>
> Cheers,
> Greg
>
>
> On Oct 8, 2009, at 11:08 AM, John A. De Goes wrote:
>
>>
>> Some of these are not ready for production use; e.g.: RESTng:  
>> "RESTng is still experimental and incomplete". It has no  
>> documentation and doesn't even compile. Sadly typical.
>>
>> It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I'd switch to Haskell in a  
>> commercial setting if there were more good libraries, yet the act  
>> of switching would lead to the production of more good libraries.  
>> The latter, though, is cost-prohibitive, given all the components  
>> that would need to be developed. A few years from now, or post  
>> Haskell-on-JVM, I might be singing a different tune.
>>
>> I do greatly admire the work you and your company have done for  
>> Haskell.
>>
>> What has the Industrial Haskell group done so far? I haven't seen  
>> any announcements. The work I'd be most interested in helping co- 
>> sponsor is Haskell on JVM (biggest bang for the buck).
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> John A. De Goes
>> N-Brain, Inc.
>> The Evolution of Collaboration
>>
>> http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101
>>
>> On Oct 8, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Don Stewart wrote:
>>
>>> john:
>>>> 	* Haskell interfaces to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, etc.
>>>
>>> This one is fine:
>>>
>>> twitter
>>>      hs-twitter library: Haskell binding to the Twitter API
>>> del.icio.us
>>>      delicious library: Accessing the del.icio.us APIs from  
>>> Haskell (v2)
>>> friendfeed
>>>      ffeed library and programs: Haskell binding to the FriendFeed  
>>> API
>>> LiveJournal
>>>      feed2lj program: Cross-post any RSS/Atom feed to LiveJournal
>>> flickr
>>>      flickr library and programs: Haskell binding to the Flickr API
>>> amazon
>>>      hS3 library and program: Interface to Amazon's Simple Storage  
>>> Service (S3)
>>> mediawiki
>>>      mediawiki library and programs: Interfacing with the  
>>> MediaWiki API
>>> google pubsub
>>>      pubsub library and programs: A library for Google/SixApart  
>>> pubsub hub interaction
>>>
>>>
>>> Speaking of REST,
>>>
>>> RESTng library: A framework for writing RESTful applications.
>>>
>>> And auth:
>>>
>>> WindowsLive
>>>   windowslive library and program: Implements Windows Live Web  
>>> Authentication and Delegated Authentication
>>> OpenID
>>>  openid library: An implementation of the OpenID-2.0 spec.
>>> OAuth
>>>  hoauth library and program: A Haskell implementation of OAuth  
>>> 1.0a protocol.
>>>
>>>
>>> We've obviously not all there yet, but we have a way to get there --
>>> write and improve code on Hackage. Galois is doing its part (we've
>>> released dozens of web packages), but the other commercial users  
>>> need to
>>> help out too.
>>>
>>> Join the Industrial Haskell Group and fund open source work. Or,  
>>> if you
>>> can, release some of the non-IP-encumbered things you work on!
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Don
>>
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