From:
Hans van Thiel
For me library support, for networking in particular, has been the major hurdle. It gets problematic when too many libraries are still marked as experimental and only partially implements the specification (e.g. protocol) that they are supposed to handle. Also after a quick look at the source for some common (networking) libraries I found a few too many calls to error to feel comfortable. It's not okay for a library to bring down my application behind my back, error should be reported even if this uglifies the code and interfaces. Furthermore I think that Haskell would benefit from moving some commonly used functionality such as HTTP, SQL and XML support into the standard libraries. I haven't seen any news about the progress of HaskellNet but I guess it could solve my problems.
That's good to know, thanks!
I really don't have much problems with tool support, speed and the like. I'm convinced it's a library (and library documentation!) thing.
Likewise.
Having someone pay a group of people to hack on Haskell implementations would indeed be desirable. Without knowing the details Ubuntu looks like a promising model. If we could just find a willing billionaire out there..
Candidates would be companies that have an interest in promoting Haskell and/or fp, large and small. Ericsson comes to mind, if they are still active in fp. Or maybe one of the rising Indian, Chinese or or other 'globalization' firms could be the principal here? Personally, I'd love to see a Brazilian company like, for example, PetroBras pick this up. And just from a PR point of view, Haskell does project a cutting edge image. Anyway... Regards, Hans
Cheers,
Johan