I haven't done much digging to figure out what exactly why hugs behaves this
way, but I've noticed the performance of a windows plunges if there is an
idle instance of Hugs open. I'm not exactly sure if unix has this same
problem. I'm far less liable to leave hugs running when I'm using in on
unix.
For example, my computer can process a Seti@home work unit in approximately
9 hours. However, if I accidently leave a copy of hugs running in the
background, it takes my computer more than 80 hours to process a single
unit.
This is a fairly significant annoyance. Another significant annoyance is
that one cannot interactively define a functions; one must type it into a
file and load it into hugs. It really hinders exploration of the language,
not to mention that it would be really handy when debugging programs. Why
would this require any significant amount of work to implement in Hugs?
I will be a TA for a class that will cover FP semester, and the main
langauges under consideration are SML, CAML, or Haskell. Unfortunately,
this lack of real interactivity is a significant strike against Hugs. This,
in turn is a strike against Haskell. We need the interpreter to be
available for most student's home computer, (thus ruling out HBI) nor do I
think we will be getting involved with GHC, which can be a pain to install
and use.
best,
leon
