I haven't found multitrack audio recording applications written in
Haskell. These are usually written in C++ using Jack audio or ASIO.
This probably means that it is not a good idea to write real time
audio applications in Haskell at the moment.
So, probably avoid writing applications that use a high frequency
timer and IO that should be synchronous to the timer in Haskell.
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:02 PM, wren ng thornton
Dave Tapley wrote:
Hi everyone
So I should clarify I'm not a troll and do "see the Haskell light". But one thing I can never answer when preaching to others is "what does Haskell not do well?"
Usually I'll avoid then question and explain that it is a 'complete' language and we do have more than enough libraries to make it useful and productive. But I'd be keen to know if people have any anecdotes, ideally ones which can subsequently be twisted into an argument for Haskell ;)
With the appropriate caveats about particular subdomains (see final paragraph), I wouldn't use Haskell for scripting. That is, (1) for Bash-style programming where 95% of the code is just invoking *nix jobs, or (2) for very simple yet regex-heavy scripts where Perl/Awk/Sed is often used.
Re #1: Honestly, I don't see anything other than a dedicated competitor being able to unseat Bourne/Bash at this task. Certainly a competitor would have much room for improvement-- what with being able to replace string-rewriting semantics with term-rewriting semantics, vastly improving type safety and catching innumerable bugs. However, with unsavory frequency, it is exactly those type-unsafe substitutions which can make shell scripting cleaner and more direct than a type-safe alternative. Having type safety as well as this sort of non-compositional structure would take a good deal of work to get right.
Re #2: People often complain about spooky Perl that uses things like implicit $_ or other hidden variables. While these constructs can make any sizable project unmaintainable, for the quick and dirty jobs they're just what's needed to get things done with clarity. While ByteString code using regexes is just as fast in Haskell, it's often more than twice as long as the Perl, Sed, or Awk equivalents because many of the basic control structures (like Perl's -n, -p, -l,... flags) aren't already provided.
That said, this isn't necessarily a bad thing for Haskell. "Real" programming languages often don't do so well in these areas (Perl being the exception), and they don't feel too bad about it. Both varieties of shell scripting are very much of the DSL nature; for programs with a significant amount of "actual logic" instead of mere plumbing or regexing, Haskell can certainly outshine these competitors. On the one hand, C and friends fight dirty and much work has been done so Haskell can join in on the bit-bashing glory. However, shell scripting is a whole different kind of imperative muck and very little work (that I've seen) has tried to get Haskell to jump down in the sewers with them.
-- Live well, ~wren _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe