On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 01:58:59PM -0500, Paul Hudak wrote:
Aaron Denney wrote:
I'd rather it didn't until a few warts were fixed. OTOH, it may be too late already, barring a Haskell 2.
Does Python not have warts? Or Pearl, or Java, or C#? I don't think that a few warts prevent a language from becoming a "success".
Of course not. My point was not how to get Haskell to take off, but that I'd rather one with fewer warts did than one with more. A misfeature in a popular language sticks around forever. I think Haskell is slowly accellerating, and will reach "widely known about" status fairly soon.
But you may be right that it is too late... Haskell is getting old! Sometimes I think that for a language to "succeed" it must do so in its infancy.
Perl didn't really take off until perl 4. Java had a huge marketing engine behind it. Python did take off relatively quickly, though.
Perhaps the thing to do is create a new language with a new name, but base it entirely on Haskell's semantics, then equip it with just one really good library to solve well just one important niche problem, and see what happens. If it is seen as a shiny new silver bullet in just one niche area, it might take off like a rocket.
And it lets the biggest warts be fixed. -- Aaron Denney -><-