| It has just been announced that Hugs may go into
| Microsoft Developers Studio
Please remember that one of the main goals with Haskell systems like
Hugs and GHC is to make Haskell an increasingly realistic choice for
program development by a wide range of people in a wide range of
environments. We're not there yet, but that's the goal.
I am not personally involved with the particular project that you
mention, but I'm sure that the idea is to *increase* (not restrict)
the size of the Haskell community by making the tools available to a
wider audience. In this particular case, that means users of the
Microsoft Developer Studio. It certainly doesn't mean making the
tools available *only* to users of the Microsoft Developer Studio.
If you use a different environment, that's fine --- we won't ask
you to change.
It is true that there are currently some (small) parts of Hugs that
are specific to the Windows versions, particularly in support for
things like graphics. (Technically, there are also parts of Hugs
that are specific to other platforms, but they are less noticeable.)
There aren't many of us working on the project, so our time and
resources are limited, and it's common sense that we should focus our
efforts on supporting whatever platforms get most widespread use. And,
of course, we have always been open to contributions of all kinds from
anyone who can help us to improve our systems or broaden their use.
Javasoft have shown that you can build portable and popular languages
with comprehensive and platform-independent libraries (albeit with
some minor glitches). However, it requires a lot of time and/or
people --- the kind of investment that is often possible only in
a commercial environment. From that perspective, perhaps industry
backing for Haskell (be it from Microsoft, Sun, or any other company)
would be good for the language ... Not to dominate or dictate its
future directions, but to support and encourage it to wider acceptance
and use.
Think positive!
All the best,
Mark
