Re: [Haskell-cafe] Comments requested: succ Java

Interop between Haskell and Java is too difficult to be practical. And I stand by my statement that no Java shop is going to switch over to Haskell, precisely because they cannot afford to abandon either their existing investment, or the _billions of dollars_ worth of commercial- friendly open source libraries available for the Java platform. But I do agree on this: the JVM does indeed need a Haskell-like language. Regards, John A. De Goes N-Brain, Inc. The Evolution of Collaboration http://www.n-brain.net | 877-376-2724 x 101 On Sep 27, 2009, at 8:10 PM, Curt Sampson wrote:

On 2009-09-27 10:36 -0600 (Sun), John A. De Goes wrote:

...

I'm not sure what the point of your series is. No one who is using Java now commercially can move to Haskell because Haskell doesn't run on the JVM.

That's a rather strong statement, and I don't accept it. I can not only think of many possible circumstances where it would be possible for a Java-using shop to write a piece of software that doesn't run on the JVM, but I have sween many of these. There are lots of shops out there using, e.g., C++ code as well as Java code, who are already obviously able to use non-JVM languages.

Given that, one point would be to show that there are more benefits to be gained by switching from Java to Haskell than there are from switching from Java to one of the other languages mentioned. This may be enough to tip some shops into Haskell.

Second, it might inspire people to have a look at bringing a more Haskell-like language to the JVM, or add more Haskell-like features to existing JVM languages.

Third, even if a shop is not going to switch, having people understand what's out there, and where many of these ideas come from, is a good thing, I feel.

cjs -- Curt Sampson +81 90 7737 2974 Functional programming in all senses of the word: http://www.starling-software.com