Kevin Atkinson and I argue about C++'s 'Cleaner more natural syntax':
> I would like to be able to do the things in Haskell that I can do in C++
> but currently Haskell's type system is too simple to allow me to do
> them. There are also some things I can't do in C++ but really wish I
> could, I also wish I could do those things with Haskell. I am not
> saying C++ is an elegant language, however it is a powerful one. I
> would like to have that power in Haskell.
I concur that there are places, due to its desire to maintain
strong typing properties that Haskell is 'less powerful' than C++.
But the consensus seems to be that strong typing is worth the
occassional pain (or at least we avoid the pain by not using Haskell
if the task isn't well-suited, perhaps), and that we _don't_ want
to abandon that in favour of C++'s inherent lack of type safety
(or that if we do, we go and write C++ programs). Yes, there
are areas in which it appears to be possible to make Haskell-style
typing more general, without any basic loss of typing properties,
but as you say in a related context, it rapidly gets Rather
Technical, so the issues aren't as simple as 'Haskell's type
system should immediately be made to accept everything C++ would'.
And that says nothing about the desirability of Haskell syntax vs.
some other system's, in cases where their power is essentially
equivalent, which was the particular topic at hand.
> Haskell for *most* things has far cleaner syntax than just about any
> other language out there. However, OO is not one of them.
"OO" is such a open-ended term, with such a lack of any simple
definition that I think it'd be best to avoid it entirely (I mean in
this sort of discussion, though 'ever' wouldn't be a bad plan either),
in favour of more specific, albeit more open-ended, features of same,
whether those be message-passing, ad hoc polymorphism, subtyping,
inheritance, state encapulation -- et cetera, et cetera. Haskell takes
a decidedly 'cafeteria' approach to that shopping list, so blanket
statements like 'Haskell is good/bad for OOP' obscure more than they
reveal, IMO.
Slán,
Alex.
