[Haskell-cafe] Comments requested: succ Java

[John A. De Goes]

If you have counterexamples, then perhaps you can name them. I'm  
looking for Java shops with 5+ developers and code bases of > 100k  
converting over to Haskell. I don't know _any such shop_ that has  
switched to Haskell, and I doubt any exist, but I'd be delighted to  
learn I'm wrong.

Let me ask you this question: how long would it take you to get an  
HTML/CSS, W3 compliant browser in Haskell? Or how about a peer-to-peer  
networking system with seamless scaling and automatic failover? How  
about a scalable BigTable implementation? In Java, the answer to these  
questions -- and just about any others you can think of -- is "a few  
minutes", because the code has already been written.

Libraries are _everything_. In many cases, they can increase your  
effective budget by 10x or even 100x. That means instead of having  
$100k for a project, you suddenly have $1 - 10 million worth of  
resources at your disposal.

Regards,

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

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

On Sep 28, 2009, at 7:49 AM, Curt Sampson wrote:

> On 2009-09-28 07:01 -0600 (Mon), John A. De Goes wrote:
>
>> And I stand by my statement that no Java shop is going to switch over
>> to Haskell....
>
> I have counterexamples. So "pfffft!"
>
>> ...or the _billions of dollars_ worth of commercial-
>> friendly open source libraries available for the Java platform.
>
> Right; the library myth. I rank this one up there with, "Haskell can
> never be an effective programming language, because it doesn't have
> objects."
>
> I've been hearing that having lots of libraries is an insurmountable
> advantage, and you're doomed if you give them up, since long before I
> took up Haskell. It's mostly myth promulgated by people driven by  
> fear.
> I'm sure it's the case in some shops that they have lots of people who
> can glue libraries together but can't program, and they somehow manage
> to produce applications this way, but even that I suspect is not so
> frequent a situation as you'd think.
>
> Nonetheless, since all of this is rather missing the point of my
> articles, anyway, I think I'll leave that as my last word on the  
> topic.
>
> cjs
> -- 
> Curt Sampson       <cjs at starling-software.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
>           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
>                   http://www.starling-software.com