[Haskell-cafe] Re: "Haskell is a scripting language inspired by Python."

[Henning Thielemann]

On Thu, 4 Nov 2010, Andrew Coppin wrote:

> It's a full-scale programming language (although I gather folks do use it for 
> scripting too), and while it may or may not contain features that are also in 
> Python, it is manifestly /not/ "inspired by" Python. Clearly it was inspired 
> my Miranda and the host of similar-yet-incompatible languages like it. (The 
> design goal was to replace these languages, after all.)
>
> On a somewhat tangental note: It seems increadible to me that Haskell was 
> invented in 1990, and Miranda way back in 1985. At the same time, Commodore 
> Business Machines released the iconic Commodore 64 in 1982, and most of the 
> civilised people of the world spent the next 10 years or so writing computer 
> programs in BASIC. It's a rather sobering thought to think that way back in 
> those long-lost days of 8-bit microprocessors, RF-modulated graphics and 
> unstructured programming, there were people somewhere working on languages 
> such as Miranda. I mean, comparing BASIC to FP is like comparing a water 
> pistol to a tactical thermonuclear device. (!) Where the heck did all this 
> stuff happen?! Can you actually run something like Haskell with mere 
> kilobytes of RAM?

For me at least 1985 is the year, where the Amiga 1000 was released. At 
this time, machines with a MC 68020 were refered to as "Work stations", 
what for me meant something like "expensive professional computer". For 
Amiga with some megabytes RAM and a CD drive we had the Geek-Gadgets-2-CD 
in 1997 that contained Gofer. However at this time I was glad to program 
in object oriented style and especially GUIs with OOP.