[Haskell-cafe] Domain specific error messages

[Alberto G. Corona]

Can´t agree more. Haskell may die slowly for industry if we don´t push it.
For me this issue is clearly this is the major obstacle for creating high
level languages close to each domain problem.

Haskell can not success in other ways, because EDSLs is the natural form in
which Haskell present a solution, in the same way that in Ruby is a
customizable Web application, in DotNet a windows application in C is a
library or console application.


Believe it or not, there are problems out there that are more complicated
that monads or profunctors. And these people have enough with their
problems, they neither want nor need to understand your monads. They want
solutions that speak in terms of their language, not yours. 99% of them
will never convert themselves into a small haskell software house to have
the three or four EDSLs that they need. that does not make economic sense.
But they would buy haskell consultancy services to extend, integrate and
install EDSLs. The day to day work can be done by the domain problem
experts, since the EDSLs uses their respective jargon.

As soon as there is something out there that do 20% of what haskell can do
for creating high level EDSLs, with  decent customizable and understandable
error messages for people that know a little of programming but are
intersted in having a rapid and flexible solution for their problem, then
the days of Haskell as a promising language for industry may have passed
away.

2014-11-23 21:42 GMT+01:00 Wojciech Danilo <wojciech.danilo at gmail.com>:

> Richard - did you think about some way of funding Haskell development? I
> think a lot of people are talking about low people-hours spend on GHC, but
> nobody ever told that a good solution here will be funding of its
> development. We've got so many options here - dotations, companies, vc's,
> community funding (maybe even kickstarter). You know, this would help MUCH
> Haskell and overall - everyone from this community. But in general - people
> are not working this way, that if somebody will tell - this is a good idea,
> everybody woudl do it. I'm writing exactly to you, because you are somebody
> very close to GHC and we all see, you "want" to do something good. Why not
> get funding for Haskell and GHC? I would love to help, really - as much as
> I can. But if everyone agree, we have to do something with it, as fast as
> possbile, othercase, Haskell will slowly die - taking in consideration how
> much moneyu is put in Scala, Go etc. These languages are getting better
> everyday - and of course, they've got another asusmptions than the best
> programming language I've been suing in my life, they have got many
> man-hours more spend on development than we do.
> What do you think?
>
> All the best,
> Wojciech
>
> Sun Nov 23 2014 at 8:42:29 PM użytkownik Artyom <yom at artyom.me> napisał:
>
>> 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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-- 
Alberto.
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