[Haskell-cafe] Domain specific error messages

[Artyom]

On 11/23/2014 09:01 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

    It is so evident that this is THE problem of Haskell

Unfortunately, it’s not evident. Note that I’m /not/ saying it’s not 
“the” problem of Haskell; merely that

  *

    I consider myself to be somewhat intelligent

  *

    and – without having put much thought into this question – I don’t
    find it evident at all that the incomprehensibility of error
    messages arising when using DSLs is “probably the biggest barrier
    for the acceptance of Haskell on Industry”

Therefore, unless you’re sure for some reason that I’m an outlier and 
the majority of programmers /do/ find it evident but prefer to pretend 
they don’t (for pragmatic, evil, or other reasons), I would suggest 
writing an article attempting to persuade the community that it’s indeed 
a major problem – or, better yet, the problem which has the biggest 
utility/complexity-of-implementation ratio. I remember that what got me 
into Haskell was simply a handful of “mind-blowing” examples – an easily 
readable parser in a few lines of code, the elegance of |map| versus a 
|for| loop, things like that. A post with side-by-side comparisons of 
real-world GHC error messages arising when working with various DSLs 
(parsec, attoparsec, blaze, binary, diagrams, etc.) vs. mockups of 
improved error messages, alongside with a section describing the current 
research done in this direction and outlining general ideas/concepts, 
would probably do the trick.

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