what's the goal of haskell-prime?

[Isaac Jones]

"Claus Reinke" <claus.reinke at talk21.com> writes:

>> No language can serve all of the people all of the time, but I think
>> we should just do our best with a single standard.  I think that the
>> complexity of multiple languages / layers / standards would not be
>> worth the payoff.
>
> My original understanding of the Haskell' effort was that it was *not*
> intended as going for "Haskell 2", but rather as an update of Haskell 98.

I agree with what Simon PJ said on this subject in his followup.  We
will "flirt with" some largeish changes, though it's unclear whether
or not we will adopt any.  There's some chance we might adopt one or
two; we just want to take it on a case-by-case basis.

Perhaps some would like the discussion itself narrowed to
tried-and-true features, but I'm hesitant to make such a mandate.  I
think it's healthy to put up with wide-ranging discussion, especially
now.  It would be a shame if we missed some opportunities here because
we came in with too many preconceived notions.

Hopefully we can bring threads to a close with some consensus on the
wiki, and we can look at all of the proposals together objectively.

> In other words, the target is Haskell 2005:

I like calling it Haskell' for now because the other names have too
much baggage.  Maybe when it's done, or when we make the first
proposal, it'll be called Haskell06 or what-have-you.

> - anything that was tried and tested by the end of 2005 is a potential
>    candidate for inclusion in Haskell 2005. nothing else is.
>
> this would necessarily exclude much of the discussion here, for which
> I'd see only three ways out:

I don't see anything wrong with discussion.  The only downside is that
there's a lot of email, but I'm used to it.  Hopefully if there are
any nuggets of gold in those big threads, someone will find them and
put them on the wiki.  The committee should _actively_ be mining for
such nuggets.

I'm going to try to close down big threads after a while with a
summary on the wiki.

>    - make an exception to rule one (bad, but occasionally needed)
>    - ignore and leave for Haskell 2, whenever that might be (impractical)
>    - standardise as an optional addendum to Haskell 2005, to lay the
>        groundwork for Haskell 2010, and to narrow down on the more
>        successful experiments (good, avoid adhoc Haskell 2 in favour
> of incremental approximations)

Another advantage to putting things on the wiki is that they'll be
documented for any Haskell-prime-prime to choose from.

(snip)
> btw, I'd find it hard to track discussion on a wiki/ticket system alone.

Yeah, the wiki is definitely not for discussion.

> Could a member of the committee arrange for a Haskell'-weekly
> message, please (similar to Haskell weekly, but collecting news
> headers and links from haskell', wiki, track, and internal committee
> discussions)?

It would be _great_ if someone on the committee, or anyone for that
matter, would summarize the discussion weekly.  Perhaps Donald will do
that as part of Haskell Weekly News, but I'm sure he'd be glad to have
some help.

Any volunteers?


peace,

  isaac