[Haskell] Nirvana

Andrzej Jaworski himself at poczta.nom.pl
Fri Jul 27 15:53:05 EDT 2007


Hi,

I guess most of you have already watched this laughing contest:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/d/2/cd213f37-2a1d-4b79-80a6-fc82978bf69b/Meijer_Peyton-Jone
s_Language_MSRCam2007.wmv

It offers first hand information that the usefulness of Haskell as programming language amounts
exactly to 0. This is a big surprise for me. On the contrary, I think Haskell has been getting too
expressive at the expense of fundamental issues left neglected like relatively weak module system.

But here up comes another surprise - this complex fancy but pragmatic sugar developed to support
human reasoning was selected to manage alien low level environment.

Yet another shock comes form worshiping C, C#, Java as perpetually useful. So, it seems Okasaki
wrote for an alternative world.

This is becoming incomprehensible for me and I shall retreat to mathematics. But perhaps my
impressions could stir up some useful discussion here, as I have great sympathy for you guys:-)

Best regards,

-Andrzej



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