Burning bridges

[amindfv at gmail.com]

Whoa! I don't think that replacing list-monomorphic functions in the prelude with more-general ones is going to cause the community to split down the middle! 

Most of the changes we're talking about won't even break any legacy code! Of course, some typeclass-rearranging will break things, but not the prelude replacements that we've been discussing. The biggest impact is that existing teaching texts may have old information about the type signatures of standard functions. 

As much as I *love* imagining the Haskell community in a bridge-burning, rival GHC HQ deathmatch (Simon vs. Simon! Edward vs. Edward!), I really think this change won't attract the interest of any tabloids.

That said, I definitely agree that it should take more than a few +1s to move this forward. I'd suggest a relative-consensus on the libraries list, then a "Here's our plan; are we crazy?" email on haskell-cafe.

Tom


El May 20, 2013, a las 6:59 PM, Felipe Almeida Lessa <felipe.lessa at gmail.com> escribió:

> IMHO, the problem is that the community isn't large enough to be able
> to suffer a split.  Case in point: how are we going to have two GHC
> HQs?
> 
> If we're going to burn bridges, perhaps we should follow a
> Python-3-esque path of releasing a major upgrade together with:
> 
>  - A refactoring tool to aid with the transition.
> 
>  - A deadline of, say, 2-3 years during which the latest GHC for
> current Haskell would receive bugfixes while GHC 8 moves along as
> usual.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 7:49 PM, wren ng thornton <wren at freegeek.org> wrote:
>> On 5/19/13 7:25 PM, Anthony Cowley wrote:
>>> 
>>> I think this issue may be too big to rely on mailing list +1s. Is there
>>> any precedent for having a web-based poll of some sort? We often get more
>>> engagement in debates on IRC and /r/haskell than the mailing list, so let's
>>> not let the choice of forum drive the result.
>> 
>> 
>> Indeed.
>> 
>> Personally, I'm all for blessing Foldable/Traversable as "built-in" and
>> getting rid of the monomorphic legacy. But then, I'm also all for making
>> Applicative a superclass of Monad, not having all the mtl modules re-export
>> everything from Control.Monad, etc. However, all of these issues have a long
>> history of discord, and that discord cannot be resolved on this list IMO.
>> 
>> I'm generally a staunch advocate of backward compatibility. However, these
>> issues are ones where we've known the right answer for a long time (unlike
>> refactoring the numeric type class hierarchy), and we've simply been
>> unwilling to burn bridges in order to do the right thing. I love Haskell,
>> and I respect the haskell' committee, but I think it's time to just burn it
>> all down.
>> 
>> Let us not forget the original reasons for many of these warts. Some of them
>> stem from ignorance or oversight (superclasses of Monad); others stem from
>> the desire to help newcomers (monomorphism); and others stem from
>> circularities in the language definition (the existence of the Prelude). As
>> Haskell has developed, we have learned more ---therefore we should not
>> embrace prior ignorance---, our standard idioms have evolved ---therefore
>> clinging to list-monomorphism *causes* confusion rather than alleviating
>> it---, and we've tried to remove much of the circularity involved in
>> desugaring the various built-in notations for lists, arithmetic sequences,
>> do-notation, etc.
>> 
>> With all that has changed in the last 15 years, I think it's high time to
>> fork Haskell, tear off all the bandaids, and begin afresh. This won't solve
>> all the problems, of course. We will still despair of the numeric hierarchy;
>> we will still despair of the partial functions demanded by the Haskell spec;
>> we will still worry about how to resolve things like MPTCs, type families,
>> and all that. But at least we can finally put these particular ghosts to
>> rest. Alas, to fork the language is to split the community. And while I
>> advocate such drastic measures, they are measures which cannot be resolved
>> either on this list or by the (intentionally conservative) haskell'
>> committee.
>> 
>> --
>> Live well,
>> ~wren
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Libraries at haskell.org
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Felipe.
> 
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