Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: statep haskell-lang [was: Re: Hoogle and Network.Socket]

Believe it or not, but I still edit Haskell sources with vi sometimes. My favorite Emacs doesn't work on iPhone. On 26 Feb 2009, at 23:18, John A. De Goes wrote:

Are you saying has been no progress since K&R C in the number of libraries available to C programmers? And that C programmers still have to edit files with vi and compile and link by specifying all files on the command-line?

You may disagree, but the evidence points in the opposite direction. There are tens of thousands of robust C libraries available to suit any particular programming need. Many of Haskell's own libraries are based on C versions. Tool support for the C language (not for some successor you might think would exist if the language continued evolving) can detect memory leaks, detect memory overwrites, apply dozens of automatic refactorings to C large-scale C programs, etc.

Library and tool support for the C language is light years beyond Haskell. It wouldn't be there if we had been through 20 iterations of C each completely breaking backward compatibility.

Regards,

John A. De Goes N-BRAIN, Inc. The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net | 877-376-2724 x 101

On Feb 26, 2009, at 1:08 PM, Achim Schneider wrote:

...

"John A. De Goes" wrote:

...

What do you mean by "progress"? I noted before that there are tradeoffs. Constraining the evolution of the language in backward compatible ways leads to substantial improvements in tools, libraries, and the speed of compiled code. That's progress in several dimensions -- just not along the dimension of "language".

I disagree. Backwards compatibility can be the very reason no progress _can_ be made in the areas you mention. The C toolchain was and is a mess for anything but small, uniform, single-platform programs, things like valgrind of course outperform plain lint in a variety of ways, but are still hacks around the language's major flaws (And I'm speaking as a C-fan, here). Further breakthroughs in C compiler technology will require stalin-like brute force and library support... well, did you ever use yacc or libxml and compared them to Haskell solutions?

Java generics are broken by design, for the questionable benefit of backwards compatibility. Leave those Bad Decisions to language communities who don't care about Doing It Right. "Right" being a technological measure here, not how well politics sell to accountants.

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