[Haskell-cafe] Template Haskell a Permanent solution?

Henning Thielemann lemming at henning-thielemann.de
Mon Dec 27 08:44:41 CET 2010


On Mon, 27 Dec 2010, Jonathan Geddes wrote:

> #1 Parse a string at compile-time so that a custom syntax for
> representing data can be used. At the extreme, this "data" might even
> be an EDSL.

I think it would be enough, if the compiler could be told to unfold an 
expression like
   parse "text in a domain specific language"
  at compile time.

> #2 Provide instances automatically.

http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0-latest/html/users_guide/generic-classes.html


I also think that Template Haskell is used too much. Several things that 
are done in existing libraries could be done in plain Haskell in a better 
way. For the cases where Template Haskell is really needed, I'd prefer a 
solution that allows to generate the code before compilation, such that 
packages with automatically generated code can be run also on compilers 
that do not support Template Haskell.



More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list