On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 2:46 PM, Kyle Hanson <me@khanson.io> wrote:

I think its important to identify who you want your "customers" to be. If you only want the most advanced type theorists to use the language, that is perfectly fine, but what you lose are thousands of developers that can benefit the Haskell community without having to know advanced Typing.

Needing a "Beginners" mode in a language is *not* a feature, its a fundamental design flaw. It shows that the language was not sufficiently thought out and designed for everyone.

Its extremely important to not lose touch with the people that make the community; the newcomers. Sacrificing the 99% of beginner and intermediate haskellers for the 1%, I believe is a step in the wrong direction.

I'm sympathetic, but the same arguments were made against the Foldable-Traversable Proposal. See for instance

http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-traversablefoldable-should-not-be.html

Since that wound up going in, I think this ship has sailed. Types are going to become increasingly polymorphic in the Prelude. Though I wish this weren't so I've come to accept it, and I doubt attacking it head on is going to get anywhere.