Hi Alex,
| Out of curiosity, how big is the user community? How many downloads of
| the software? How many are on this list?
I don't know the answers to any of these, but I think you're implying
"very small", and I'm sure you're right. Perhaps you're also suggesting
that our community is too small for this kind of development model, and
again that may well be true. What does this say about the future of
Haskell?
| Also, why are there so many Haskell compilers for so few users?
| There is really only one PD C compiler, GCC, and only one PD Perl
| interpreter, perl (or vice versa on the capitalization).
| Haskell has Hugs, GHC, NHC, HBC, for the core language ...
I think there are plenty of counterexamples here. For example, we don't
just have Linux ... there's also NetBSD, FreeBSD, and GNU Hurd. And for
C compilers, we also have egcs and lcc. And there are several Java
compilers out there, both free and commercial. But you're right again:
I'm sure that we fragment our small community to some degree by having
multiple implementations, perhaps without achieving critical mass. One
positive effect of having multiple implementations is that it reduces
the element of risk: If Haskell was the product of one small group,
perhaps without clear funding or long term commitment to maintaining
it, then you'd probably have a harder time justifying any decision to
use it in a new project. On the other hand, the differences between
implementations can also work against us. The groups involved have been
actively working together to avoid such problems, but it's not easy.
| As an aside, the cost of this very powerful type system will probably be
| error messages that are probably incomprehsible to those not versed in
| category theory ...
I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. Also, this is one of the
few areas in current Haskell systems where the developers can actually
justify the effort involved because it raises genuine and interesting
questions for research. But note that the error messages that prompted
Jon's comment didn't have anything to do with sophisticated type systems.
Dealing with those kinds of things requires some hard work, but it isn't
research, and so it's hard to justify, at least in an academic context.
All the best,
Mark
