The Future of Haskell discussion at the Haskell Workshop

[Ketil Z. Malde]

Iavor Diatchki <diatchki@cse.ogi.edu> writes:

> Adrian Hey wrote:

>> IMHO preserving the status quo wrt records should be low priority.
>> It really doesn't bother me much if new (useful) language features break
>> existing code. I think this is a better option than permanently
>> impoverishing the language and/or forcing users to migrate their
>> entire code to some other less impoverished language which may
>> appear in the future.

> I also think that having backwards compatability is not much of an
> issue.  After all, ghc has introduces a  number of not backward
> compatable changes to haskell, and I never heard any complaints.=20

Oh no?

Implicit parameters: I'm sure it is a great thing, but I'd already
used the (?) operator, and need -fglasgow-exts.  Now my program
depends on a bunch of well places spaces to compile.

Template Haskell: really cool new feature, which just happens to use
a syntax that overlaps with the list comprehension syntax.

And now, let's just screw any backwards compatibility, and re-engineer
the records system=B9.

I don't need any of this, and it makes my life harder.  Are you guys
going to keep at it, until I regret ever using Haskell?  There was
recently a thread about using Haskell for something else than Haskell
compilers; well, if you actually want people to do this, then you
can't constantly keep changing the language.

-kzm

PS: For the record, I think the compiler developers are in general
doing a great job of augmenting the language *without sacrificing
backwards compatibility*.  But compatibility is important.  Branch GHC
and develop a new language instead!

--=20
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants