Comments on: 37 Reasons to Love Haskell (playing off the Ruby article) http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/ software, programming languages, and other ideas Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:54:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU By: haskell programming http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-1027 haskell programming Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:50:39 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-1027 > 24. It (really) has no pointers. what about Foreign.Ptr then there's Foreign.StablePtr and System.Memory.Weak > 24. It (really) has no pointers.

what about Foreign.Ptr then there’s Foreign.StablePtr and System.Memory.Weak

]]> By: Eduardo Costa http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-937 Eduardo Costa Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:17:53 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-937 I cannot understand why one uses Haskell, instead of Clean. I would appreciate to hear arguments for using Haskell, when one can use Clean. Since these two languages are very similar, it is quite easy to convert programs from one to another. I have seen huge number crunching programs in Clean (for instance, programs to model lightning, by Lucian Lima and Lucian Martins) performing better and much faster in Clean than in MatLab with a C toolbox. Since Haskell has not efficient implementation of arrays, it is impossible to port such a program to Haskell. Thus, here is my first complain about Haskell: It does not provide efficient array processing. Clean compiler (thanks to unique types) catch most input/output errors; Haskell will catch the errors only at runtime, and I do not like programs from my company crashing at the client's machine (who does?); for instance, Haskell compiles the program below without a single warning; Clean issues an error message, and fails to compile. module Main where import IO main = do fromHandle <- getAndOpenFile "Copy from: " ReadMode toHandle <- getAndOpenFile "Copy to: " WriteMode contents IOMode -> IO Handle getAndOpenFile prompt mode = do putStr prompt name do putStrLn ("Cannot open "++ name ++ "\n") getAndOpenFile prompt mode) I cannot understand why one uses Haskell, instead of Clean. I would appreciate to hear arguments for using Haskell, when one can use Clean. Since these two languages are very similar, it is quite easy to convert programs from one to another. I have seen huge number crunching programs in Clean (for instance, programs to model lightning, by Lucian Lima and Lucian Martins) performing better and much faster in Clean than in MatLab with a C toolbox. Since Haskell has not efficient implementation of arrays, it is impossible to port such a program to Haskell. Thus, here is my first complain about Haskell: It does not provide efficient array processing.

Clean compiler (thanks to unique types) catch most input/output errors; Haskell will catch the errors only at runtime, and I do not like programs from my company crashing at the client’s machine (who does?); for instance, Haskell compiles the program below without a single warning; Clean issues an error message, and fails to compile.

module Main
where

import IO

main = do fromHandle <- getAndOpenFile “Copy from: ” ReadMode
toHandle <- getAndOpenFile “Copy to: ” WriteMode
contents IOMode -> IO Handle

getAndOpenFile prompt mode =
do putStr prompt
name do putStrLn (”Cannot open “++ name ++ “\n”)
getAndOpenFile prompt mode)

]]> By: Pierre http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-739 Pierre Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:20:22 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-739 Amazing you manage to say that object oriented is the first reason to love Haskell. Sounds like everything is object oriented these days. What about trying to figure out what it means first ? Amazing you manage to say that object oriented is the first reason to love Haskell.

Sounds like everything is object oriented these days.

What about trying to figure out what it means first ?

]]> By: Mike http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-619 Mike Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:26:04 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-619 #27 is false. It's really not fair to say that "Libraries" are a point in haskell's favor. Most of the packages on Hackage will not build successfully on a recent GHC system, and there is no QA system for packages outside of GHC boot/base package set (core data structures). Also, despite several attempts and a work-in-progress (LambdaVM) there is not yet a functioning, easy-to-install bridge to Java/CLI or other langauges (just a DIY FFI to C), so the huge multiverse of Java/Python/Perl libraries are not effectively available to Haskell. Haskell can't really be said to have real-world library support. #27 is false.

It’s really not fair to say that “Libraries” are a point in haskell’s favor.

Most of the packages on Hackage will not build successfully on a recent GHC system, and there is no QA system for packages outside of GHC boot/base package set (core data structures).

Also, despite several attempts and a work-in-progress (LambdaVM) there is not yet a functioning, easy-to-install bridge to Java/CLI or other langauges (just a DIY FFI to C), so the huge multiverse of Java/Python/Perl libraries are not effectively available to Haskell.

Haskell can’t really be said to have real-world library support.

]]> By: Anonymous http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-360 Anonymous Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:38:30 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-360 About point 28: Linux doesn't have an anti-virus program. Haskell doesn't have a debugger. About point 28: Linux doesn’t have an anti-virus program. Haskell doesn’t have a debugger.

]]> By: p http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-247 p Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:51:50 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-247 Jessta: Haskell's state management is just broken down to a little finer level than traditional imperative variable storage. You can program in that same style by using bind operators, but you also have the option of abstracting the state you keep track of to things like nondeterminism, while being assured that different states will compose sanely. Jessta: Haskell’s state management is just broken down to a little finer level than traditional imperative variable storage. You can program in that same style by using bind operators, but you also have the option of abstracting the state you keep track of to things like nondeterminism, while being assured that different states will compose sanely.

]]> By: mm_freak http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-206 mm_freak Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:31:49 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-206 I would like to note that Haskell has a very powerful and fast generalized exponentiation operator for integral exponents. If you define a new Num-instance (e.g. for modular arithmetic or more exotic things like elliptic curve groups), the exponentiation operator will be specialized to it automagically, and works just the way you would expect. I would like to note that Haskell has a very powerful and fast generalized exponentiation operator for integral exponents. If you define a new Num-instance (e.g. for modular arithmetic or more exotic things like elliptic curve groups), the exponentiation operator will be specialized to it automagically, and works just the way you would expect.

]]> By: Jessta http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-201 Jessta Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:14:25 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-201 Every time I read an article like this I get the urge to try haskell again. But everytime I try haskell it's quite confusing. The whole, 'we don't have state except that we do but we call it something else' GUIs have state, there is no getting around that. Every time I read an article like this I get the urge to try haskell again. But everytime I try haskell it’s quite confusing.

The whole, ‘we don’t have state except that we do but we call it something else’

GUIs have state, there is no getting around that.

]]> By: Tom http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-193 Tom Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:49:12 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-193 " ... besides, lists are stupid, anyway." Said the Lisp fan. :) (BTW, you're right about the Lisp part) ” … besides, lists are stupid, anyway.”

Said the Lisp fan.

:)

(BTW, you’re right about the Lisp part)

]]> By: sorear http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-191 sorear Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:26:13 +0000 http://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2007/07/29/37-reasons-to-love-haskell-playing-off-the-ruby-article/#comment-191 3. All implementations of Haskell are recognisably interpreters. (Some of them, notably HBC and GHC, use dynamic specialization techniques to achieve very good performance, but they're still technically interpreters.) 6. Hugs supports DOS. Nhc98 supports palm-pilots. Yhc (with Golubovsky's new backend) supports internet phones. 10. Forget smart, it's pretty much the most advanced in the world! Memory allocation is as fast as sequential writes; OOM checks are coalesced automatically; generations and parallelism are supported, with incrementality in an unmerged branch. 24. But if you really, truly need them, you can get a safe (type-safe and unable to damage things outside of the current computation) version from Control.Monad.ST. 28. Haskell supports Forth-style interactive experimenting, with the added benefit that purity makes it unnecessary to entire commands in the right order, reset states, or anything like that. It isn't great, but it's much better than most non-C languages... 3. All implementations of Haskell are recognisably interpreters. (Some of them, notably HBC and GHC, use dynamic specialization techniques to achieve very good performance, but they’re still technically interpreters.)

6. Hugs supports DOS. Nhc98 supports palm-pilots. Yhc (with Golubovsky’s new backend) supports internet phones.

10. Forget smart, it’s pretty much the most advanced in the world! Memory allocation is as fast as sequential writes; OOM checks are coalesced automatically; generations and parallelism are supported, with incrementality in an unmerged branch.

24. But if you really, truly need them, you can get a safe (type-safe and unable to damage things outside of the current computation) version from Control.Monad.ST.

28. Haskell supports Forth-style interactive experimenting, with the added benefit that purity makes it unnecessary to entire commands in the right order, reset states, or anything like that. It isn’t great, but it’s much better than most non-C languages…

]]>