Proposal: overhaul System.Process

[Curt Sampson]

On 2008-05-25 16:27 -0700 (Sun), Frederik Eaton wrote:

> ...but updating it whenever the standard interface changed and broke
> my code. So I'd like to cast my vote for backwards compatibility. The
> standard libraries will never be perfect, but constantly deprecating
> and removing functionality can really impair their usefulness for
> large projects.

Just as a counterpoint, I have to say that one of the things that
impressed me a lot about Haskell over the last two months as I've
started using it for real work is that the library interfaces are of
noticably higher quality than other languages I've used (in the main, C,
Java and Ruby). Part of this may be due to having smarter people working
on things in the first place, but I suspect a reasonable amount is due
to the ability to change interfaces as one discovers how libraries
are really used and better ways to design them. I wouldn't want to
lose this, and end up with the kind of cruft that everybody knows is
broken but will never go away that exists in the Java and (to a lesser
degree) Ruby libraries. I'm willing to put up with a fair amount of
interface-change pain to this end.

cjs
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Curt Sampson       <cjs at starling-software.com>        +81 90 7737 2974   
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