Hello! On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 01:14:38PM -0000, Neil Bartlett wrote:
Just that it would be great to hear more about the mundane aspects of programming occasionally. Like, how exactly do I read from a relational database with Haskell? Or process an XML file? Or build an event-driven GUI? And crucially, why does Haskell do those things better than Java, or C#, or Ruby? If somebody could write some articles on those subjects,
You seem to assume no such articles exist, which is wrong. It doesn't take too much searching to find them - I just googled for "haskell gui", "haskell xml", "haskell database" and got very relevent links at the top. Don't expect you'll find those articles on your doorstep together with a milk bottle ;-) There are so many topics connected with Haskell that it wouldn't be possible to link them directly from the start page of http://www.haskell.org/. Also, writing articles about the superiority of Haskell over Java, C#, etc. could be seen as (or simply be) chauvinism and arrogance, don't you think? Especially if written by someone like me, who knows Haskell much better than all those languages (so can't program *well* in those languages). Well, you can try with the "great programming language shootout", where many people contribute solutions for the same problems in many languages.
and get them up on popular websites like Digg or Reddit, this would be far more helpful than yet another monad tutorial.
Are you sure it's a good idea to bomb uninterested people with Haskell all the time. Something to get them interested - sure. But when they are interested, I believe they can find what they want mostly on their own. Of course it's good to make the search easier, but it's impossible to eliminate it completely.
The Haskell web server that Simon Peyton-Jones et al described in their paper would be a great example. But where's the download?
Let me stress this: HWS is an *exception*. It's the only Haskell related thing that I had trouble to find.
I think Haskell has huge potential to improve mainstream programming, if it could only catch on a bit.
Define "a bit". According to my definition, it already happened :-)
I don't know how to make that happen, unfortunately
Don't start a crusade to convert the people - history shows that such enterprises most often have fatal outcomes.
But whatever Haskell needs, it's not getting at the moment.
Honestly, I don't see that. To me it seems that everything is going nicely: the language is used, the community is alive, compilers are getting better, libraries are getting better are more numerous, the number of users seems to be increasing. What is the problem? Try to convince me that something is wrong ;-) (I can think of some problems, but I am *not sure* we should be afraid of them). Best regards Tomasz