John said:
>
>The point has also been made that Haskell 1.4 lacks some features that are
>already quite well understood and will be sorely missed for serious
>applications --- multi-parameter classes, state threads, existential and
>universal types. If this is the last revision then the most important
>extensions must be considered now; they can't be deferred until the next
>version. I'm well aware of that, and I think the rest of the committee is
>too. Extensions are not ruled out: nevertheless I think it's right that we
>should approach such matters in a restrictive spirit. The last thing we want
>to do is add experimental features to `Standard Haskell', only to find out in
>a year's time that we got the design wrong. It seems to me that the three
>points above probably are sufficiently well understood for us to get the
>design right now; other ideas like interaction with other programming
>languages probably are not. However, I don't want to pre-empt the committee's
>work here by saying in advance what will go in and what will not.
This sounds awfully as if the committee's mind is already made up. Yes we
are going to freeze Haskell. It seems to me that these are the very reasons
for not freezing Haskell.
Tony Davie, Computer Science, St.Andrews University, North Haugh, St.Andrews
Scotland, KY16 9SS, Tel: +44 1334 463257, Fax: +44 1334
463278
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