[Haskell-cafe] Backward compatibility

[Adrian May]

>
>
>  you've let a 5-10 million line project spiral out of control without
> putting the necessary software engineering infrastructure and controls in
> place ... This issue you're having reflects a lot more strongly on your
> technical culture than it does on any instability in GHC.
>

I can't dictate either that culture or the whole project. I often walk into
projects that have been mismanaged for years and try to prop them up. Crap
languages are also to blame and that's why I'm interested in Haskell at
all. But it's the reality I have to live with. It would be a lot easier for
me to sell better languages if they at least paid some heed to backward
compatibility.

Listen: someone within your organization decided to build a product based
> on a very old library which is no longer maintained by anyone. If this
> library were actually critical to your business, you would fork it and
> either get someone in-house or pay a contractor to fix bugs and keep it up
> to date. (And there are plenty of people here who might be interested in a
> contract gig to fix this for you if you asked).
>

Fine. Go ahead and write yourself a blank cheque on my account. Maintenance
costs are a fact of life anyway. What I don't understand is why people are
trying to maximise them when I'm trying to minimise them.


> Repeatedly claiming in the most histrionic terms that GHC ought to freeze
> forever and never deprecate anything again
>

Now you're putting words into my mouth. I've said from the very first
posting that I acknowledge the need for change but would like it to be
restricted to stuff that's actually useful and/or necessary instead of
changing things just for the hell of it. I'm asking for a compromise. I
said that from the start.


> newsflash: it's a research platform),
>

That would be a newsflash. I seem to remember it wanting to be a popular
quasi-standard FP.



> and is not going to garner you any sympathy on this list, either. You
> could practically be the poster boy for why we have the motto "avoid
> success at all costs".
>

Now you're just being rude.


> You have two options: stay on GHC 6.x (the bits didn't get deleted from
> the internet), and if that isn't practical, fix Wash (or pay someone to do
> it if you don't know how) and get on with your life.
>

I already found newer libs anyway.

I really don't know why somebody can't make a simple and well intentioned
point without getting attacked by people who feel threatened over every
little thing. I said from the start that I think Haskell is cool. I'd just
like it to pay a bit more attention to practical issues whilst making
progress with its theoretical ones.

Why don't you just put it in the forum rules that nobody is ever allowed to
criticise anything?

At the end of the day, I'm just a typical manager who's atypical in wishing
he could tell his programmers to study a bit of Haskell without making it a
synch for the manager next door to knife him in the back for suggesting
something that looks this unstable. This is the real deal on how Haskell
looks out there in the mass market. You can lead a horse to water...
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