Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
clearly this guy has never seen Phil Wadler. Some people may find this tasteless - I thought it was funny, so I guess those people will find me tasteless also. In that case, I'm probably already in their kill files, so this won't offend anybody. http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz/ -kzm -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Well, THERE's two good entries! :^) On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:21:21 +0100, Ketil Malde [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: clearly this guy has never seen Phil Wadler. Some people may find this tasteless - I thought it was funny, so I guess those people will find me tasteless also. In that case, I'm probably already in their kill files, so this won't offend anybody. http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz/ -kzm -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
At Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:00:18 -0500, GoldPython wrote: Hi, all, Has anyone tried presenting the language to the average rank and file programming community? If so, was it successful? If not, is there interest in doing so? I think this article is right-on when it comes to explaining why haskell has not yet succeeded (it even mentions haskell): http://khason.biz/blog/2004/12/why-microsoft-can-blow-off-with-c.html Jeremy Shaw. -- This message contains information which may be confidential and privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender and delete the message. Thank you. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
When I compile it I get three files, an actual runnable binary (at only 5M in size), a .o file and a .hi file. I'm sure these additional files are usefull in someway and as soon as I come across the right piece of documentation everything should make sense. But as a person new to the language I'm just left wondering why. [..] javac often creates tens or hundreds of .class files, some with strange names like MyClass$1.class, MyClass$2.class, and so on (yes, I know what they are for), and doesn't even generate a native binary. [..] When I use javac every file that is created is necessary for the application to run. This can't be said of the ghc compiler. Having an excuse that this is way the C compiler does it or that this is the way its always been done is to poor of a reason to even argue against. If a file isn't needed then it shouldn't be left there. This isn't really true for Java either. You surely don't intend to distribute your app as a bunch of .class files - you distribute the .jar file. The .class files are just intermediate files that javac leaves lying around; and javac isn't even capable of building the .jar itself! You have to use a separate utility. Just think of ghc as a combined javac and jar, the .o files as .class files, and the executable as a .jar. In fact, this is how ghci treats .o files - it loads them as needed, in a way not that different from the Java VM (except that of course .o files are native, not bytecode). Anyway, this has already descended into advocacy, and I'll stop here. --KW 8-) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Mon, 6 Dec 2004, Sven Panne wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The original observation was that the compiler seems archaic. When asked, I gave some general comments. What I should have just said was that it was to much like a C compiler. Which, no matter how neat you think it is, is archaic. Hmmm, using the number of files generated from a source program as a measure of the coolness of a programming language or its compiler is extremely strange. There's nothing I could care less about if the language itself fulfills my needs. Do you care about the strange intermediate files VisualStudio produces? The contents of you CVS or .svn subdirectories? I'm quite happy being able to ignore these things... What's unfortunate here is probably that the files are lying around in the same directory as the sources. E.g. the build system of Modula-3 uses a directory structure like this: Project LINUXLIBC6 - object files and other generated files for Linux SOLgnu - object files and other generated files for Solaris src - sources, Makefiles and other data This way not only generated files are out of scope in every day programming but it is also absolutely no pain to develop for several platforms simultaneously. The disadvantage is clearly that a programmer has to conform to this structure, but this could also be considered as advantage. But one could consider it as an disadvantage that is more complicated to work with many but small programs. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
I find myself agreeing with the implied likely response to all of the points you raise below. I'd say that any attempt to proselytize Haskell (or any new technology) needs to start from a clear view of one kind of application that it is particularly good for. Then, focus on building a bridgehead for that narrow application area. For example, I've been using Haskell to experiment with reasoning tasks on Semantic Web data -- it's an application for which Haskell seems to be eminently well-suited, for the following reasons, among others: * functional expression (as opposed to imperative) means that the reasoning programs are more closely related to the reasoning tasks being performed. * its type system ensures that necessary formalities of mapping concepts to representations are fully expressed. * lazy evaluation makes search-and-backtrack patterns very easy to program. * Higher order functions facilitate separation of concerns. In short, for this kind of application, I find that I spend most of my time thinking about the problem space, relatively little time programming supporting scaffolding, and very little time debugging (once I've got the types to match up). This is my story. I don't know if there's anything here you can use. #g -- At 10:45 03/12/04 -0500, Jason Bailey wrote: Here are some questions that I would expect to get from business. Q:What have I heard about this technology? A: Probably nothing. Haskell isn't very well known in the programming community (out of 6 co-workers asked, one had used Haskell in a single college class), let alone the business community. Business has become very wary about accepting technologies that are obscure. Q:What can I do with this language that I can't do now? A:Well nothing. It can certainly do some things better then the current languages out there, but its just another general purpose language. Q:Will it require training? A: Oh yes, we're talking about a different way of looking at programs. On the surface level it should be fairly easy to pick up but it will take some time before the engineers are able to produce decent work. Oh and there are no training classes we can send people to. They will have to learn on their own. Q:Whats the market like for Haskell programmers? A: Well there isn't one. Which means that if business was going to advertise for someone with haskell programming knowledge they are going to end some spending a premium on them. Q:Why should we support yet another programming language? A: Because this is a better language. (Wouldn't work as an answer but I would give it a try. ) And this is just the business side. I kinda shudder at the thought of telling a room full of engineers that they need to abandon their current status as object level gurus and learn some language that the majority of them have never heard of. :) I think the most important aspect of getting haskell acceptance is mind share. Both from a programming perspective and a business perspective. People need to have heard of haskell and be familiar with the concepts behind it before they will be willing to give it a try. Also the larger the corporation the less likely this is going to happen. But with mind share I can see smaller corps and smaller IT departments moving over to it. Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Well, looking at perl/python/PHP (as in LAMP), I would say the trick is to pick an application area and make it extreemely easy to use the language in that area, as well as trivial to install and maintain the language support. Of course the fact that perl/python/php all picked web-services (active web pages) just as the internet took off may have helped. So as is usual in computing - use your crystal ball to find out what the next big thing is, then make sure Haskell has a cool domain-specific-embedded language that is easy to use for that application domain ready, and then make sure everyone knows about it. Keean. Gour wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: However if there is a desire to make Haskell more accessible to the majority of programmers then the first impressions that I, and those like me have is important. Sure. I'm also pretty new to Haskell ghc concerned to see Haskell used by more programmers. Applications like darcs are very important enabling newcomers to see some concrete succesful non-academia-open-source project. Besides that, seeing the progress of projects working on the binding for gui-libraries (wxhaskell gtk2hs) are VERY encouraging giving me hope that my investment in learning Haskell can be worthwile i.e. one is able to put together 'full-blown' application with gui interface. However, these projects are mostly done by few individuals working hard and there is also A Bus Hits Simon Peyton Jones problem referred during the CUFP workshop. Any idea how to make a (more organize) community effort to bring Haskell out? Sincerely, Gour ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Tue, 7 Dec 2004, Brian Smith wrote: FWIW, I use a directory structure like: src/ source code build// intermediate files (.hi, .o) dist/ deliverables I execute GHC using: ghc --make Main -isrc -hidir build -odir build -o dist/program As a result, I never have any non-source files mixed in with the source files. So, I think what you want is possible today. The difference is that for Modula-3 the same effect is achieved by e.g. m3build or cm3 that is, I never called the compiler but always used the M3 build system. Would be nice to have this with Haskell, too. Maybe 'hmake' and Cabal can help here? ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 11:30:11AM +0100, Henning Thielemann wrote: What's unfortunate here is probably that the files are lying around in the same directory as the sources. E.g. the build system of Modula-3 uses a directory structure like this: Project LINUXLIBC6 - object files and other generated files for Linux SOLgnu - object files and other generated files for Solaris src - sources, Makefiles and other data This way not only generated files are out of scope in every day programming but it is also absolutely no pain to develop for several platforms simultaneously. The disadvantage is clearly that a programmer has to conform to this structure, but this could also be considered as advantage. But one could consider it as an disadvantage that is more complicated to work with many but small programs. This is exactly what autoconf/automake gives you, it works for haskell (almost) just as well as it does for C code. In any case, this seems like the domain of a separate tool like hmake, ghc is just one of several haskell compilers, there is nothing about the language itself that requires the specific file droppings ghc leaves. (not that I mind them) John -- John Meacham - repetae.netjohn ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
When I compile it I get three files, an actual runnable binary (at only 5M in size), a .o file and a .hi file. I'm sure these additional files are usefull in someway and as soon as I come across the right piece of documentation everything should make sense. But as a person new to the language I'm just left wondering why. gcc of course leaves .o files lying around, so this is no different than C. javac often creates tens or hundreds of .class files, some with strange names like MyClass$1.class, MyClass$2.class, and so on (yes, I know what they are for), and doesn't even generate a native binary. I don't think the output of ghc is any more surprising than these; I'm surprised it bothers you. The static vs dynamic linking question has been discussed many times. The summary is: GHC is a highly-optimising compiler, and the binary interface _necessarily_ changes with every minor revision (even patchlevel revision) of the compiler and each library. So you can't sensibly share libraries between apps. Anyway, disc is cheap. HTH. --KW 8-) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
RE: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (snip) someone else wrote: gcc of course leaves .o files lying around, so this is no different than C. (snip) When I use javac every file that is created is necessary for the application to run. This can't be said of the ghc compiler. Having an excuse that this is way the C compiler does it or that this is the way its always been done is to poor of a reason to even argue against. If a file isn't needed then it shouldn't be left there. (snip) It can be useful to leave the .o files around. For instance, if you just change some source files, but not all, then you can reuse some of the old .o files instead of having to recompile everything. This gcc analogy also applies to ghc. -- Mark ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The original observation was that the compiler seems archaic. When asked, I gave some general comments. What I should have just said was that it was to much like a C compiler. Which, no matter how neat you think it is, is archaic. Archaic doesn't mean that it's bad. :) When I use javac every file that is created is necessary for the application to run. This can't be said of the ghc compiler. Having an excuse that this is way the C compiler does it or that this is the way its always been done is to poor of a reason to even argue against. If a file isn't needed then it shouldn't be left there. But given the speed of compilation with ghc I'm very happy to have a compilation cache (the .o files) around. One can argue that the whole concept of a compiler is archaic. What you are interested in is running your program. That it it happens in several steps (compile time, link time, run time) is just an implementation artefact. This holds for javac too. -- Lennart ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When I use javac every file that is created is necessary for the application to run. This can't be said of the ghc compiler. Having an excuse that this is way the C compiler does it or that this is the way its always been done is to poor of a reason to even argue against. If a file isn't needed then it shouldn't be left there. [...] Does this bother me? Not in particular, its just an indication that this is an old design. As Mark Carroll said, the .o and .hi files are there to support separate compilation. GHC supports separate compilation because it's useful. Believe me, Haskell is the last language to do something just because everyone else does it. :-) The javac approach isn't better, just different. If the next version of GHC could produce portable bytecode files, that would be a good thing (except that it would make GHC even more complicated than it already is). If the next version of GHC could *only* produce portable bytecode files, that would be a bad thing, since it would lose functionality (while gaining other functionality). Your newer-is-better premise makes little sense. Haskell is a far newer language than Java; many aspects of Haskell's design are no older than Haskell, while nearly all aspects of Java's design have been around in other languages for decades. You might as well be arguing that Java is better because it's based on older, proven technology. Better yet, suppress the urge to compare Haskell and Java at all; after all, the more different they are, the more worthwhile it is to learn both! Once you're reasonably adept at programming in different languages, then you can start thinking about ways to combine the advantages of each. -- Ben ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The original observation was that the compiler seems archaic. When asked, I gave some general comments. What I should have just said was that it was to much like a C compiler. Which, no matter how neat you think it is, is archaic. Hmmm, using the number of files generated from a source program as a measure of the coolness of a programming language or its compiler is extremely strange. There's nothing I could care less about if the language itself fulfills my needs. Do you care about the strange intermediate files VisualStudio produces? The contents of you CVS or .svn subdirectories? I'm quite happy being able to ignore these things... When I use javac every file that is created is necessary for the application to run. This can't be said of the ghc compiler. Having an excuse that this is way the C compiler does it or that this is the way its always been done is to poor of a reason to even argue against. If a file isn't needed then it shouldn't be left there. Using Java class files as a good example is strange again: Java *does* inline code, namely primitive constants, without leaving any traces of that fact in the class file. That's part of the reason why every recompilation checker for Java can only do an approximate job without actually *doing* the compilation. GHC handles this much better. Cheers, S. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote snip Your newer-is-better premise makes little sense. Haskell is a far newer language than Java; many aspects of Haskell's design are no older than Haskell, while nearly all aspects of Java's design have been around in other languages for decades. You might as well be arguing that Java is better because it's based on older, proven technology. Better yet, suppress the urge to compare Haskell and Java at all; after all, the more different they are, the more worthwhile it is to learn both! Once you're reasonably adept at programming in different languages, then you can start thinking about ways to combine the advantages of each. -- Ben Interestingly enough not once did I indicate that newer is better or that there was a problem with haskell language. All I said is that the compiler seemed archaic. I will say that it probably comes from my background. I'm sure that if I had started off with C/C++ and moved on to Haskell or that if I started with Haskell first then I would probably see things differently. Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 08:45:53PM +, Keean Schupke wrote: Marc Charpentier wrote: But Erik Meijer wrote (http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/emeijer/): Pure functional programmers, your days are numbered. The grim reaper is knocking at your door. :-/ Erik Meijer wrote also this (http://research.microsoft.com/~emeijer/): Check out my blog for more nonsense This invitation actually makes some sense ;) Personally, I don't care much if the so-called industry adopts Haskell. I manage to use Haskell at my job and to get my co-workers interested in it. Haskell is fun to use, and at the same time allows me to make some really good and robust programs. Here I would like to thank all those people, whose hard work on Haskell's theory, implementations, tools, libraries and applications made it possible. Thank you! Best regards, Tomasz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 10:05:21AM -0500, Jason Bailey wrote: I don't think you can really compare Haskell with the C's. C/C++, for the time being, is the basis of most low level api's. They don't really need a large standard library because their packages are available everywhere and are easily installed and updated. Those languages have their own problems, bigger problems if you ask me. That C++ doesn't need a large standard library is not really true - what's Boost if not a large C++ quasi-standard library? Haskell has been around for quite a while, longer then Java or Python, and almost as long as Perl. Yet it doesn't have half the inherent library functionality that these other languages have. I find it curious. I like Haskell and I think it has a lot of promise. I just don't see why this problem exists. What's funny (and curious) is that it's still easier for me to write any given program in Haskell than in those mature languages with tons of libraries. I don't want to find, learn and rely on hundreds of libraries. I want a powerful, expressive language, which makes half of these libraries unnecessary and allows me to easily create and use my own libraries. I want to learn and use powerful programming techniques, learn a couple of solid, well designed libraries, which I can understand from both sides, interface and implementation, to be able to fix them, when it is necessary. That's why I choose Haskell, not Java or Python. Best regards, Tomasz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Jason Bailey wrote: I mean I think its a really cool idea, and I'm having fun learning it. But I would be hard pressed to come up with a justification to introduce this into our business environment. How about increased productivity, and more stuff right first time... Keean. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
A question with regards to making Haskell easier to manage (like say perl or python), does Haskell have an equivalent of CPAN... if not would it be a good idea to write one? If haskell had a central code repository (like CPAN) then it would make installing a library as simple as running a single command (and you could have dependancy resolution too)... What are peoples thoughts, good idea? Keean. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Looks like your right, I thought cabal was just a library packaging standard, but it appears to have an on-line archive... I guess the real question is, can i do: cabal install package (or equivalent) and have all dependancies and the package I want downloaded, configured, compiled, and installed on my system, such that I only have to type the one command and then I can start using the library straight away? (like with install blah in CPAN) Keean. Arthur van Leeuwen wrote: Aren't the Hackage and Cabal projects supposed to lead to something like that? http://www.haskell.org/cabal Doei, Arthur. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Keean Schupke wrote: Jason Bailey wrote: I mean I think its a really cool idea, and I'm having fun learning it. But I would be hard pressed to come up with a justification to introduce this into our business environment. How about increased productivity, and more stuff right first time... Keean. No offense but those are just catch phrases. They can support a justification but won't work as a justification in its own right. Here are some questions that I would expect to get from business. Q:What have I heard about this technology? A: Probably nothing. Haskell isn't very well known in the programming community (out of 6 co-workers asked, one had used Haskell in a single college class), let alone the business community. Business has become very wary about accepting technologies that are obscure. Q:What can I do with this language that I can't do now? A:Well nothing. It can certainly do some things better then the current languages out there, but its just another general purpose language. Q:Will it require training? A: Oh yes, we're talking about a different way of looking at programs. On the surface level it should be fairly easy to pick up but it will take some time before the engineers are able to produce decent work. Oh and there are no training classes we can send people to. They will have to learn on their own. Q:Whats the market like for Haskell programmers? A: Well there isn't one. Which means that if business was going to advertise for someone with haskell programming knowledge they are going to end some spending a premium on them. Q:Why should we support yet another programming language? A: Because this is a better language. (Wouldn't work as an answer but I would give it a try. ) And this is just the business side. I kinda shudder at the thought of telling a room full of engineers that they need to abandon their current status as object level gurus and learn some language that the majority of them have never heard of. :) I think the most important aspect of getting haskell acceptance is mind share. Both from a programming perspective and a business perspective. People need to have heard of haskell and be familiar with the concepts behind it before they will be willing to give it a try. Also the larger the corporation the less likely this is going to happen. But with mind share I can see smaller corps and smaller IT departments moving over to it. Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Keean Schupke wrote: A question with regards to making Haskell easier to manage (like say perl or python), does Haskell have an equivalent of CPAN... if not would it be a good idea to write one? If haskell had a central code repository (like CPAN) then it would make installing a library as simple as running a single command (and you could have dependancy resolution too)... What are peoples thoughts, good idea? Keean. IMHO I think this is a great idea. This is something that would really enhance the Haskell experience. Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
At 10:54 03/12/04 +, Keean Schupke wrote: Jason Bailey wrote: I mean I think its a really cool idea, and I'm having fun learning it. But I would be hard pressed to come up with a justification to introduce this into our business environment. How about increased productivity, and more stuff right first time... I agree, but... to carry weight in this snake-oiled world, such a claim needs to be backed by clear evidence. #g Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Jason Bailey wrote: No offense but those are just catch phrases. They can support a justification but won't work as a justification in its own right. Here are some questions that I would expect to get from business. Q:What have I heard about this technology? A: Probably nothing. Haskell isn't very well known in the programming community (out of 6 co-workers asked, one had used Haskell in a single college class), let alone the business community. Business has become very wary about accepting technologies that are obscure. At Imperial College (top european science and technology university) all DOC undergradutes taught Haskell as main teaching language - so no shortage of top-quality trained graduates... Q:What can I do with this language that I can't do now? A:Well nothing. It can certainly do some things better then the current languages out there, but its just another general purpose language. Get static guarantees that a program won't crash... programs can be buffer-overflow proof (list based strings) and more reliable Q:Will it require training? A: Oh yes, we're talking about a different way of looking at programs. On the surface level it should be fairly easy to pick up but it will take some time before the engineers are able to produce decent work. Oh and there are no training classes we can send people to. They will have to learn on their own. See answer to 1 Q:Whats the market like for Haskell programmers? A: Well there isn't one. Which means that if business was going to advertise for someone with haskell programming knowledge they are going to end some spending a premium on them. See answer to 1 Q:Why should we support yet another programming language? A: Because this is a better language. (Wouldn't work as an answer but I would give it a try. ) Its not yet another programming language - it's the future and you don't want to be left behind... Keean. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Jason Bailey wrote: As well as a lack of decent online tutorials, examples, etc. If it wasn't for the book /Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming/ I would be much farther back in my comprehension then I am now. Speaking of books, are there any intermediate/advanced Haskell books? Ones that aren't introduction to programming texts? If I own the Hudak book, is it worthwhile to also acquire the Thompson book? Here's an analogy from the perl universe. If the _School_of_Expression_ is to _Learning_Perl_ (the llama), what are the Haskell equivalents of _Programming_Perl_ (camel) and _Perl_Cookbook_ (ram)? I suppose I should stop being lazy and contribute to the Haskell version of the PLEAC project... http://pleac.sourceforge.net/ Greg Buchholz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Some of the features they are adding to c# are pretty cool. Nothing you can't do in Haskell, but it does have the advantage of familiar syntax. On the other hand they say it is easier to teach functional programming to people who have never programmed before. I was of course thinking of how to persuade someone to adopt Haskell as yet another programming language. Marc Charpentier wrote: On 3 déc. 2004, at 17:18, Keean Schupke wrote: Its not yet another programming language - it's the future and you don't want to be left behind... Keean. But Erik Meijer wrote (http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/emeijer/): Pure functional programmers, your days are numbered. The grim reaper is knocking at your door. :-/ Marc Charpentier ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Hi All, On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:05:21 -0500, Jason Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jules Bean wrote: sniped I don't think you can really compare Haskell with the C's. C/C++, for the time being, is the basis of most low level api's. They don't really need a large standard library because their packages are available everywhere and are easily installed and updated. Other languages, such as Perl, Java, Python, need to supply their own extensive libraries just to compete.. To say in fact... look you can do whatever you want in our language just as you could in C/C++. Haskell has been around for quite a while, longer then Java or Python, and almost as long as Perl. Yet it doesn't have half the inherent library functionality that these other languages have. I find it curious. I like Haskell and I think it has a lot of promise. I just don't see why this problem exists. The standart library is not that bad as you state here. Okay, programming languages like Python ship everything including the kitchen sink with their standard libraries, but Perl for example lives from CPAN and not from the standard libraries. What we need is an easy to handle package system and an online resource like CPAN. Cabal and Hackage are on the way to support that. The fact that Java, Perl and so on have more powerful libraries is just because there is a much larger community and also companies involved. I believe that Haskell has a very large potential also in real world programming, since one can produce more stable code in much less time. The reason why it is not so popular is because it is different from what people know and people tent to use known things. OO programming didn't conquer the world over night either. Smalltalk and Eiffel have been around for a very long time until C++ and Java came up and conquered the world. Functional programming is certainly not new and LISP for example is known and used quite a lot. I mean it needs time to get Haskell it the mind of the programmers around the world and since it is teached at some universities there is a good chance to increase the popularity over time. If there is a demand the consulting and training companies will be there, the other way around doesn't work IMHO. and how complitaion and linking is handled feels antiquated. Can you be more specific here? First off let me say that I come from a world of Java. With the occasional foray into scripting languages and I only do C when forced. So yes I am spoiled :) When I compile a language I expect to do some simple command and have a single end result that is dynamically linked. One of the first things I wrote to get a feel of Haskell was a small program that popped open a gtk window with a button and every time I clicked the button it incremented a counter. When I compile it I get three files, an actual runnable binary (at only 5M in size), a .o file and a .hi file. I'm sure these additional files are usefull in someway and as soon as I come across the right piece of documentation everything should make sense. But as a person new to the language I'm just left wondering why. Why the hell do you care about intermediate files generated by the compiler. I am sure they make perfectly sense and the main point is: you don't have to care about them at all. The --make option and the automatic module chaising of ghc is perfect and I can't see what else you need and what javac can do better. Another thing I like to state here is that I have never seen a compiler that produces that nice error messages as ghc does. Considering the fact that type and class errors and be quite difficult it does a extremly good job in my eyes. Georg -- Georg Martius, Tel: (+49 34297) 89434 --- http://www.flexman.homeip.net - ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Java had a relatively slow uptake in enterprise and a meteoric rise in universities - that is really starting to pay off now as graduates look to java as a solution first (the first graduates brought up on java are just getting into decision making roles). Universities will accept Haskell for ideological reasons whereas enterprise needs practical benefits. At the moment, Haskell offers more of the former and so the focus should be on the Unis. Matt On 01/12/2004, at 1:00 AM, GoldPython wrote: Hi, all, I'm new to the Cafe, but not to Haskell (experimented with it on and off on a small scale over the last 5 or 6 years and enjoy the language quite a lot) and had more of a political question and wanted to see what people thought: Has anyone tried presenting the language to the average rank and file programming community? If so, was it successful? If not, is there interest in doing so? By rank and file I mean, outside of the acedemic world where a large number of the programmers I see have very little math background. This would be the typical commercial Visual Basic crowd and the like. Thanks, Will Collum ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
I think you may be asking the wrong question. As one of the rank and file and fairly new to Haskell (less then a month) I can tell you that there is a growing awareness of functional programming and that it offers different paradigms to work with. I think the more important question is - is Haskell ready? So far, from the perspective of a newbie, I would say no. The documentation is sparse and confusing, the standard libraries seem incomplete and how complitaion and linking is handled feels antiquated. I mean I think its a really cool idea, and I'm having fun learning it. But I would be hard pressed to come up with a justification to introduce this into our business environment. Jason GoldPython wrote: Hi, all, I'm new to the Cafe, but not to Haskell (experimented with it on and off on a small scale over the last 5 or 6 years and enjoy the language quite a lot) and had more of a political question and wanted to see what people thought: Has anyone tried presenting the language to the average rank and file programming community? If so, was it successful? If not, is there interest in doing so? By rank and file I mean, outside of the acedemic world where a large number of the programmers I see have very little math background. This would be the typical commercial Visual Basic crowd and the like. Thanks, Will Collum ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On 3 Dec 2004, at 03:48, Jason Bailey wrote: As one of the rank and file and fairly new to Haskell (less then a month) I can tell you that there is a growing awareness of functional programming and that it offers different paradigms to work with. That's good to hear. The documentation is sparse and confusing, Agreed. The hierarchical library documentation is poor in many places. the standard libraries seem incomplete Compared to perl or java? Yes, absolutely. Perl and Java both have enormous libraries of software available, and both have taken years and years to reach the current state. Compared to C/C++ (which are both popular 'real world' languages, of course) I think haskell isn't doing so badly. and how complitaion and linking is handled feels antiquated. Can you be more specific here? Jules ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
Hi, all, I'm new to the Cafe, but not to Haskell (experimented with it on and off on a small scale over the last 5 or 6 years and enjoy the language quite a lot) and had more of a political question and wanted to see what people thought: Has anyone tried presenting the language to the average rank and file programming community? If so, was it successful? If not, is there interest in doing so? By rank and file I mean, outside of the acedemic world where a large number of the programmers I see have very little math background. This would be the typical commercial Visual Basic crowd and the like. Thanks, Will Collum ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, GoldPython wrote: Hi, all, I'm new to the Cafe, but not to Haskell (experimented with it on and off on a small scale over the last 5 or 6 years and enjoy the language quite a lot) and had more of a political question and wanted to see what people thought: Has anyone tried presenting the language to the average rank and file programming community? If so, was it successful? If not, is there interest in doing so? By rank and file I mean, outside of the acedemic world where a large number of the programmers I see have very little math background. This would be the typical commercial Visual Basic crowd and the like. Even inside the mathematical academic world, Haskell is not widely known or even used. So, I'm advocating Haskell whereever I feel it is advantageous compared to the languages in use. Though, the success makes me doubting, if advocacy is always good. Programmers of traditional languages convinced me that it is possible to write bad code in Haskell. :-) It's also hard or impossible to convince people that it is good, that some things are missing in Haskell for good reasons, such as global variables. I observed that people don't like advocacy but want to make the common errors themselves. It is better if they do them in C, Perl, MatLab, whatever. If they have made enough mistakes and wonder if there are ways around then they are at the point where advertising Haskell makes sense. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Non-Academic Haskell was Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
GoldPython [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Has anyone tried presenting the language to the average rank and file programming community? If so, was it successful? If not, is there interest in doing so? The #haskell irc channel on irc.freenode.net is composed of many different flavors of programmer, from self-educated 16 year olds on up to post doctoral students studying functional programming. I'm a self-educated, self-employed programmer. I use Python in most of my paying work but would very much prefer to use Haskell. It seems obvious to me (but not to most of my clients :-) that the various powerful and expressive patterns in Haskell allow programmers to deliver more business value in less time than almost any other programming language. By rank and file I mean, outside of the acedemic world where a large number of the programmers I see have very little math background. This would be the typical commercial Visual Basic crowd and the like. I have no math background. I started with BASIC on a Sinclair, and my first real programming job was with Visual Basic 4, 5, and 6 for trust management. It seems that Haskell is about finding essential patterns and making those available for easy use. Most of my code starts out fuzzy and complicated, but as I understand the problem better, my code gets smaller. In the process, I find and refactor more and more places where my code is special or general cases of Prelude functions. Implicit For Each looping in Visual Basic was easier than manual looping in C. The map function in Python was another improvement. Now I have monads as the next step up in power, and I'm reading up on arrows. I'd think every programmer who preferred Visual Basic over C would end up loving Haskell. -- Shae Matijs Erisson - http://www.ScannedInAvian.com/ - Sockmonster once said: You could switch out the unicycles for badgers, and the game would be the same. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: Non-Academic Haskell was Re: [Haskell-cafe] Non-technical Haskell question
On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 04:57:27PM +0100, Shae Matijs Erisson wrote: The #haskell irc channel on irc.freenode.net is composed of many different flavors of programmer, from self-educated 16 year olds on up to post doctoral students studying functional programming. I'm a self-educated, self-employed programmer. I use Python in most of my paying work but would very much prefer to use Haskell. It seems obvious to me (but not to most of my clients :-) that the various powerful and expressive patterns in Haskell allow programmers to deliver more business value in less time than almost any other programming language. I've been sitting around #haskell on EfNet for something like 5 years and wondering why no one ever came by. -- wli ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
