But many features need other features. For example, the option to use referential transparency will be common in future languages for multicore programming purposes. This creates the problem of separating side-effect-free code from side-effect code. For this purpose, a strong type system at compile time is needed, which indeed need automatic type inference or, else, the user will be too busy with the details. The type inference open the door for experimenting with complex data types. class types is a logical step after that. Monads are the best option for many problems once the programmer have all te above. higuer order functions are being taken seriously in other languages. this goes to the need of currying and lists. optional lazyness and tail recursion is the most elegant option for expressing lists managing code. Will all the above, explicit loops will be avoided by the programmer, this will end up in mode declarative programming style.
I think that once the average programmer start to use one or two of these features, he will feel a bit frustrated if its language donīt have all the others, specially if he know haskell. Probably, he will use haskell for fun. This is the best way for the takeover of the industry, because this has been so historically.
2008/12/18 John Goerzen
<jgoerzen@complete.org>
Andrew Coppin wrote:
> Don Stewart wrote:
>> I think of Haskell more as a revolutionary movement
>
> LOL! Longest revolution EVER, eh? I mean, how long ago was its dogma
> first codified? ;-)
Lisp has been around for how long now? Measured in decades. We don't
even have our version of a Symbolics machine yet!
> Basically, Haskell will never be popular, but its coolest ideas will be
> stolen by everybody else and passed off as their own. :-(
Well, in a sense, if that happens, we would have won, right? We'd have
created a situation where "paradigm shift" would mean more than just a
buzzword on some CEO's presentation slide ;-)
In another sense, isn't this what Haskell was explicitly created to do?
(Combine ideas from a bunch of similar languages into one standard one)
Some ideas in Haskell are easy to integrate into other languages: see
list comprehensions in Python. I don't see Perl picking up pervasive
laziness anytime soon, nor Python compile-time type inference.
-- John