On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 03:03:51AM -0500, Mark Goldman wrote:
I have been keeping up with this thread. As a user of Haskell for comercial purposes, I can say that it does what I want. The only thing currently on my wish-list is some sort of run time debuging. (sometimes you want to know how you got to the empty list that you took the head of :) Anyhow, I find haskell more than adequete for my programming. I say this to set up my next statement. I really don't want there to be huge accretions to the language proper. I understand lisp has had a rough go because there wasn't enough standardisation of libraries, but on the other hand, I think languages like Java went overboard.
My point, I guess, is that I find haskell to be easy and efficient to develop applications with. It is quite practical. Also, the academic research that goes in to Haskell continues to make it more practical. I, for one, do not want the spirit of Haskell to change just to make it how people think it would be useful in the comercial world. It's current spirit makes it very useful and rewarding.
Seconded! I especially agree on the following points: - Haskell is useful for practical, commercial purposes NOW - Commercial development gets substantial benefits from academic research and the "academic flavour" of Haskell. If you want a less "academic" language, there are so many to choose from. Personally, I am sometimes a bit distressed by all those big demands articulated by newcomers to Haskell world, perhaps because most of the time these are things completely unneccesary for me (a non-academic programmer). Please have the humility to take some time to learn Haskell more, and then *maybe* you will appreciate the way some things are done. Best regards Tomasz