What ever happened to Haskell 98 as a "stable branch"?
Upon more reflection...
From the Preface to the Haskell 98 Language and Libraries Report:
Haskell 98 was conceived as a relatively minor tidy-up of Haskell 1.4, making some simplifications, and removing some pitfalls for the unwary. It is intended to be a "stable" language in sense the implementors are committed to supporting Haskell 98 exactly as specified, for the foreseeable future.
In other words, we already have a stable branch of Haskell. Why, then, are we so paranoid about introducing breaking changes in the development branch of haskell? Why are we stuck without the class system extension proposal? Why is Num so still so horribly mangled? Why can I not 'map' over a Set? Why must I use lists of characters if I desire standard sorting? Why can I not get a good error message from read? (If you answer "because H98 is obsolete", then file this away as a must-read after H' is released.) Stefan
| Why, then, are we so paranoid about introducing breaking changes in | the development branch of haskell? Why are we stuck without the class | system extension proposal? Why is Num so still so horribly mangled? | Why can I not 'map' over a Set? Why must I use lists of characters if | I desire standard sorting? Why can I not get a good error message | from read? It's not paranoia about breaking changes. It's simply because no one has done it. Haskell is rather a Darwinian sort of place. The way lies entirely open for you to make an alternative Prelude that is just as you want it to be. Even H98 allows you to say "import Prelude ()" to kill the Prelude, but GHC's -fno-implicit-prelude flag goes further in supporting alternative Preludes (see the docs). OK, say you do this. If your setup is sufficiently compelling, people will use it. Yes, they will have to add a one-line pragma to the top of their modules, but as Alex has been arguing in another thread this weekend, it is no bad thing for a module to advertise the language in which it is written. I don't think that one line would be a sufficient discouragement if your Prelude offered real advantages. And Cabal makes it easy for people to download and build your library. But building a well-engineered library, or set of libraries, is a lot of work. That's the problem, not paranoia. So you don't have to persuade some committee that you are right; you can just go do it. And that would be a great way to contribute. Simon PS: The same goes for this suggestion | [Conjecture 1 (2007). Haskell Mathematical Prelude and Mathematicians] If | Haskell had a mathematically sound prelude then more mathematicians would | use Haskell. A mathematically sound Prelude would be great. Go for it!
On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:20:59 +0100
Simon Peyton-Jones
| [Conjecture 1 (2007). Haskell Mathematical Prelude and Mathematicians] If | Haskell had a mathematically sound prelude then more mathematicians would | use Haskell.
A mathematically sound Prelude would be great. Go for it!
Unfortunately, we currently do not possess all the operations that mathematicians like to perform when making up new structures. In particular I can think of quotient types, which just causes a world of pain when it comes to decently implementing them. Sometimes, you can implement something that acts as that type (e.g. Set ~== List/Eq), but sometimes it's just not possible (Monad Product -- I can't remember what that paper was called now...) Gen
Haskell is rather a Darwinian sort of place.
With whole respect. You need two components for evolution to work: the survival of the fitness and Generator Of Diversity (GOD). Now, Haskell attracts originality and easily accommodates changes but nobody burns tires in testing anything so that complexity and learning curve grow while deficiencies remain dormant. Recent threads are a kind of healthy evolutionary pressure (survival of the fitness), but you insist that Haskell should be committed to GOD;-) With great respect, -Andrzej
I didn't understand what you meant, so I'll withdraw the Darwinian analogy. All I mean is: if you think the Prelude is inadequate, an excellent strategy is to write a better one. If it's better, people may start to use it, and your good ideas will spread. Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: Andrzej Jaworski [mailto:himself@poczta.nom.pl] | Sent: 26 March 2007 14:02 | To: Simon Peyton-Jones | Cc: Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org | Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] What ever happened to Haskell 98 as a "stablebranch"? | | >Haskell is rather a Darwinian sort of place. | | With whole respect. You need two components for evolution to work: the | survival of the fitness and Generator Of Diversity (GOD). | | Now, Haskell attracts originality and easily accommodates changes but nobody | burns tires in testing anything so that complexity and learning curve grow | while deficiencies remain dormant. | | Recent threads are a kind of healthy evolutionary pressure (survival of the | fitness), but you insist that Haskell should be committed to GOD;-) | | With great respect, | -Andrzej
participants (4)
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Andrzej Jaworski -
Gen Zhang -
Simon Peyton-Jones -
Stefan O'Rear