On Mon, 2008-09-01 at 01:20 -0700, Don Stewart wrote: > ryani.spam: > > On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Jonathan Cast > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > This concept of `day-to-day work' is a curious one. Haskell is not a > > > mature language, and probably shouldn't ever be one. > > > > I see where you are coming from here, but I think that train has > > already started and can't be stopped. > > Yeah, it's too late. Too many people have their pay checks riding on > GHC, the Hackage library set (now up to 740 libraries and tools!), and > the continued development of the language in general. > > If Haskell's not "mature" yet, then perhaps it has reached its early > twenties, with an reliable heavy duty optimizing compiler, fast runtime, > large library set, standard documentation, testing, debugging and > packaging tools, and large community. > > And a community with a lot of energy. > > We're serious about this thing.
I think it's great y'all have a nice language for software development. For that matter, I think it's great *I* have a nice language for software development. ACIO, say, wouldn't really change that. But I think (and expect) Haskell should fork sometime soon, with one branch picking up ACIO and other pragmatic lets-do-this-now stuff, and another branch eschewing them in favor of concentration of research into getting around the need for such features. And, on the other hand, I can help thinking your description fits Unix from c. 1980 pretty well, about the time of the transition from V7 to BSD. Sure, the BSD developers made Unix a lot easier to use and wrote a lot of tools (with a *ton* of options, natch.), but in the process, a certain ability to hold the community to account to its highest ideals was lost. I'd like to see Haskell (including its `practical' branch) not go that route, but I think standardizing the little compromises made along the way is a terrible way to go. Haskell's highest ideals should remain pure. jcc _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
