On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:50 AM, John D. Earle
in progress. The Haskell creed appears to be, This is the way so stick to it! The idea appears to be that by sticking to the program the problems will be overcome in time and we will be left with all the glorious goodness. At
I think this is a bit of a misnomer. My perception of a "Haskell creed", if there really is one, is something more along the lines of: "Purity (also laziness, amongst other things) gives us some desirable properties. Let's see how far we can go with these ideas and if we can use them to solve practical problems." The Haskell community is not trying to shove these ideas down your throat. We're just interested in exploring them. Before monadic I/O was introduced, the absence of side effects made practical applications clumsy if not impossible [1]. But the Haskell researchers persisted. It just so happens that now the industry seems to be taking note of what the Haskell community has accomplished with careful adherence to these ideas. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/history-of-hask...