Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Why binding to existing widget toolkits doesn't make any sense

2009/1/29 Gour

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"Conal" == Conal Elliott writes: Hi Conal,

Conal> Hi Achim, I came to the same conclusion: I want to sweep aside Conal> these OO, imperative toolkits, and replace them with something Conal> "genuinely functional", which for me means having a precise & Conal> simple compositional (denotational) semantics. Something Conal> meaningful, formally tractable, and powefully compositional from Conal> the ground up. As long as we build on complex legacy libraries Conal> (Gtk, wxWidgets, Qt, OpenGL/GLUT, ...), we'll be struggling Conal> against (or worse yet, drawn into) their ad hoc mental models and Conal> system designs.

Conal> As Meister Eckhart said, "Only the hand that erases can write the Conal> true thing."

Nicely said...

I'm sure you're not the only one desiring to write GUI in "genuinely functional" toolkit, but, being realistic and considering how many people are working on bindings for those "legacy libraries", I doubt we'll see something written from the scratch and usable for "Real World Haskell" soon ;)

Sincerely, Gour

Hi Gour, I don't mind if it takes a while, since I'm confident it'll be worth the wait. Besides, compositionality yields exponential rewards. Some more encouragement from my friends: "No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw Regards, - Conal