On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 19:31, Ashley Yakeley wrote: > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > Manuel M T Chakravarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 10:07, John Sharley wrote: > > > I note this remark on the Microsoft Research site > > > (http://research.microsoft.com/projects/ilx/fsharp.aspx) > > > <quote> > > > Purely functional languages like Haskell are excellent within certain > > > niches, but unfortunately some simple programming exercises can quickly turn > > > into problems that require a PhD. to solve. > > > </quote> > > > > > > Are the Microsoft Research people working on GHC or anyone else on this list > > > also of this opinion? If so, why? > > > > This is a clear case of FUD: > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD > > I agree. It's been changed now, however: > > "Purely functional languages like Haskell are excellent > within certain niches, but non-trivial problems exist > with language interoperability between lazy and strict > languages." > > Given your work on FFI, would you care to comment? I wonder if F# really > is as obviously preferable to a "Haskell#" as they claim?
It would help if they would detail what these supposedly non-trivial problems are. If you look at the FFI Addendum, you will see that Haskell's default evaluation strategy is barely mentioned at all in the document. This is, because - beyond the issues of evaluation order that the IO monad takes care of - laziness is nothing that interferes with the FFI. There is, however, a critical design decision involved: the Haskell FFI emphasises marshalling in Haskell land. Nevertheless, this design decision has been made due to good reasons beyond laziness; see the rationale at the beginning of Section 5 of the FFI Addendum for details. Generally, phrases such as "XYZ is excellent within certain niches" sounds like cheap propaganda to me. If you replace Haskell by Linux, I am sure you'll find similar statements on other Microsoft web pages ;-) Manuel _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
