[Haskell-cafe] If you'd design a Haskell-like language, what would you do different?

[Heinrich Apfelmus]

Tillmann Rendel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Robert Clausecker wrote:
>> Image you would create your own language with a paradigm similar to
>> Haskell or have to chance to change Haskell without the need to keep any
>> compatibility. What stuff would you add to your language, what stuff
>> would you remove and what problems would you solve completely different?
> 
> I would try to improve the language's support for the embedding of 
> domain-specific embedded languages (aka. combinator libraries). Such 
> embedding requires the integration of a domain-specific language's 
> syntax, static semantics and dynamic semantics. Some (more or less far 
> fetched) ideas about these three areas follow.

I think this is a very good point. The things I would like to see:

* Better syntax for observable sharing. Doaitse Swierstra proposed a 
"grammer" construct that is basically a  let  statement where the binder 
names can be observed. I'm not entirely sure whether that is the most 
general or sufficient syntax, but something along these lines.

* Meta-programming / partial evaluation. When designing a DSL, it is 
often the case that you know how to write an optimizing compiler for 
your DSL because it's usually a first-order language. However, trying to 
squeeze that into GHC rules is hopeless. Having some way of compiling 
code at run-time would solve that. Examples:
** Conal Elliott's image description language Pan
** Henning Thielemann's synthesizer-llvm



Best regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

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