Hello Simon, Tuesday, June 28, 2005, 1:58:13 PM, you wrote: SM> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/survey2005-summary.html SM> There's a lot to take in, but it's an interesting read. Enjoy! thank you all, processing all the 600 answers was not easy work :) i have several comments regarding results of this survey: 1) GHCi compiles to bytecode several times faster than GHC makes unoptimized compilation. can unoptimized GHC compilation just create bytecode (as Ocaml does)? 2) is your plans to support x86-64 platform includes Windows (and all other sorts of Unix), or it's for Linux only? 3) many users complaining about non-compatibility between GHC versions. if they mean library interfaces changes then how about using Pesco's library versioning scheme? (see http://www.haskell.org/tmrwiki/EternalCompatibilityInTheory) 4) i definitely will poll for nightly snapshot build for Windows (if it's possible) and frequent releases of stable versions i think there is a plans to move toward the "real world". but it encounter the chicken&egg problem - the commercial programmers don't want to use Haskell because it's too far-from-earth, and you cannot make movements toward "real world" because there is almost no voices from non-academic world. of course i can't monopolize the right to say over all these programmers. but from my point of view several things can be done to be closer to commercial programs and programmers: 1) adding OO-like features in O'Haskell style. for readers that don't know it's about adding new variants to ADT types: type Figure = Circle ... type Figure |= Box ... and adding new fields to existing records: type Point = {x,y::Int} type ColoredPoint = Point extended with {c::Color} imho these extensions are great because it's both in Haskell and C++ style 2) adding "real-world" libraries. i think about libraries for string processing, regular expression handling, command-line processing, serializing, ASCIIZ strings, working with filesystem and running external commands, networking, web-oriented libraries (http/ftp/smtp/pop3, constructing/deconstructing emails), DBMS access i enumerated here only working libraries which i seen in MissingH, or written by Pesco, John Meacham, or Peter Simons 3) may be it is time to include some FFI-generating tool in GHC? many newcomers have some C/C++ libraries they need to communicate 4) some newcomers wrote what they want to say example programs and even tutorials in the package. i think that at least links to such sources/texts can be provided so that a newcomer can easily get a TASTE of Haskell 5) of course, you must add words about Pugo and Darcs in readme :) anyway, ADT is a vehicle of progress ;) -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:bulatz@HotPOP.com