Syntax Extensions (and future Haskell)

[b.i.mills at massey.ac.nz]

Ton, Henrick,

> | The importance of Haskell is  [...] the emphasis it puts on the 
> | manner in which the total function is decomposed. [...]

> Would the picture be less gloomy if you said "the emphasis I put on..." 
> rather than "the emphasis [Haskell] puts on..."?

At first reading, I would have said no, but I get your point. 
As long as pure sub-Haskell exists, I can still write pure code.

> I think most Haskeller's, agree with you: we would like to strive 
> for uniformity.  But how does one get there, how does one agree 
> on agreeing?  A large part of the answer, I think, is through 
> experiments, i.e. experimental language features,  [...]
> And in order to find *good* answers to such questions, one needs
> to make use of these features in pretty serious projects, which 
> in turn implies that there has to be a reasonable way of enabling 
> and disabling them. And command line arguments just isn't a very 
> good way of doing that in practice.

You've both made good points, which I accept. Although I remain 
wary of these things becoming too much a part of the pragmatic 
usage and getting locked in as standard behaviour for applications.
But, you've convinced me that goal of concptualy pure pragmatic
programming is still a feature of the group.

Wiping nose on sleeve, 
I withdraw to write some more geometric software.

Regards,

Bruce.