Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Most Important...

Jonathan Geddes

30 May 2012 30 May '12

8:30 p.m.

I love Haskell. It is my absolute favorite language. But I have a very hard time finding places where I can actually use it! I had hoped that compiling Haskell to C with -fvia-C (or would it be just -C?) would allow Haskell to run in new, uncharted territory such as Android (with NDK), IOS, Google's NaCl, etc. But today I learned that GHC's C backend has been deprecated! Is it more difficult than I am imagining to get Haskell to work in these environments? Is it simply a matter of low interest in this kind of work? Or something more fundamental? Am I missing something? I'm hoping that the Haskell->JavaScript efforts will mature enough to make Haskell viable for client-side web apps. (I think the first sign of this will be a self-hosting Haskell->JavaScript compiler.) I use Haskell for Server-Side code with various web frameworks, but over the years more and more of the app logic is moved into client-side JavaScript, leaving the server-side code as little more than a simple validation and security layer over the database and other services. Haskell doesn't have any trouble with this, of course, but it's not exactly a role where it can shine. (Of course this is not true of ALL server-side code, just the kind of apps I have been writing.) So anyway I'd like to request feedback: where can I use Haskell besides simple CLI utilities, dull server code, or project Euler problems? Even if it's just to contribute to getting Haskell in the environments mentioned above, any feedback is welcome! Thanks for reading, --J Arthur

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Brandon Allbery

30 May 30 May

10:32 p.m.

New subject: Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Jonathan Geddes wrote:

...

I had hoped that compiling Haskell to C with -fvia-C (or would it be just -C?) would allow Haskell to run in new, uncharted territory such as Android (with NDK), IOS, Google's NaCl, etc. But today I learned that GHC's C backend has been deprecated! Is it more difficult than I am imagining to get Haskell to work in these environments? Is it simply a matter of low interest in this kind of work? Or something more fundamental? Am I missing something?

The C backend was never suitable for that; it couldn't cross-compile and it used some crufty Perl to apply dubious optimizations to the generated code (and never did anything interesting on x86 anyway due to lack of registers). The portable ANSI C backend, which is used to port GHC to a new platform in the absence of cross-compilation, still works — but produces rather slow code. The native and LLVM backends are much better, and there is at least some potential for cross-compilation. I believe there is work proceeding on an ARM native code generator that can be used to target Android. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms

Johannes Waldmann

31 May 31 May

7:11 a.m.

New subject: [Haskell-cafe] Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

Jonathan Geddes writes:

...

I love Haskell. It is my absolute favorite language. But I have a very hard time finding places where I can actually use it!

have you considered "your head" as such a place that should be easy to find. even "just for specifying things", Haskell is tremendously useful. even if you don't write programs, but just their types. you can express your software design that way, and have it formally verified (by the compiler's type checker). best regards, J. W.

Richard O'Keefe

6:42 p.m.

It's difficult to imagine any kind of program that doesn't need testing; surely there is a role for Haskell in writing test data generators?

Ivan Perez

10:41 a.m.

New subject: Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

On 31 May 2012 01:30, Jonathan Geddes wrote:

...

I love Haskell. It is my absolute favorite language. But I have a very hard time finding places where I can actually use it! This has been bugging me for years and, like you, I think we ought to lean towards web-pages and mobile devices.

Yesod has been a tremendous push forward in this direction but, as you already stated, the browser and android devices remain mostly unexplored in Haskell. Here's my bit: - There's a port of ghc for iphone. - There's frege (http://code.google.com/p/frege/), a non-strict, pure, functional programming language in the spirit of Haskell. - I've been working as a freelance developer for some time now. I focus on desktop apps in Haskell. I can't say I'm overwhelmed by the amount of offers (speaking of which, if anyone needs a freelance haskell developer,... ahem), but this area will not be clinically "dead" as long as we cannot use web applications knowing (99% sure) that the owner of the website cannot use our personal information for any purpose other than giving us our service. There's only two kinds of clients here, though: those that explicitly want Haskell, and those than don't care about the programming language. Otherwise, you'll have to sell Haskell and, personally, I'm not that good a salesman (10% success, tops). - I've also ported Haskell designs to other programming languages (with small adaptations). I only found this cost-effective because the code in Haskell was not going to be thrown away. Good luck. Please, let us know what you find. Cheers, Ivan.

...

I had hoped that compiling Haskell to C with -fvia-C (or would it be just -C?) would allow Haskell to run in new, uncharted territory such as Android (with NDK), IOS, Google's NaCl, etc. But today I learned that GHC's C backend has been deprecated! Is it more difficult than I am imagining to get Haskell to work in these environments? Is it simply a matter of low interest in this kind of work? Or something more fundamental? Am I missing something?

I'm hoping that the Haskell->JavaScript efforts will mature enough to make Haskell viable for client-side web apps. (I think the first sign of this will be a self-hosting Haskell->JavaScript compiler.)

I use Haskell for Server-Side code with various web frameworks, but over the years more and more of the app logic is moved into client-side JavaScript, leaving the server-side code as little more than a simple validation and security layer over the database and other services. Haskell doesn't have any trouble with this, of course, but it's not exactly a role where it can shine. (Of course this is not true of ALL server-side code, just the kind of apps I have been writing.)

So anyway I'd like to request feedback: where can I use Haskell besides simple CLI utilities, dull server code, or project Euler problems? Even if it's just to contribute to getting Haskell in the environments mentioned above, any feedback is welcome!

Thanks for reading,

--J Arthur

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Jonathan Geddes

11:42 a.m.

New subject: Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

...

J. W. wrote: have you considered "your head" as such a place that should be easy to find. even "just for specifying things", Haskell is tremendously useful. even if you don't write programs, but just their types. you can express your software design that way, and have it formally verified (by the compiler's type checker).

Yes! And in fact this is exactly how I use Haskell now (aside from little scripts and such). It has had a HUGE effect on the way I write software. There have been a number of times that a colleague has asked what a strange comment was in my Java[Script] code. When I tell them that the funny looking one-liner is the Haskell equivalent of the following 30+ Java[Script] lines, they are incredulous, to say the least. But taking that beautiful Haskell one-liner and manually transcribing it into an imperative language feels like being a human compiler. My favorite example of this was the use of the power set in JavaScript:

...

//powerSet = filterM (const [True, False])

and then a few dozen JavaScript lines it "compiled down to" via the human compiler. --J Arthur On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Ivan Perez wrote:

...

On 31 May 2012 01:30, Jonathan Geddes wrote:

...
I love Haskell. It is my absolute favorite language. But I have a very hard time finding places where I can actually use it! This has been bugging me for years and, like you, I think we ought to lean towards web-pages and mobile devices.

Yesod has been a tremendous push forward in this direction but, as you already stated, the browser and android devices remain mostly unexplored in Haskell. Here's my bit:

- There's a port of ghc for iphone. - There's frege (http://code.google.com/p/frege/), a non-strict, pure, functional programming language in the spirit of Haskell. - I've been working as a freelance developer for some time now. I focus on desktop apps in Haskell. I can't say I'm overwhelmed by the amount of offers (speaking of which, if anyone needs a freelance haskell developer,... ahem), but this area will not be clinically "dead" as long as we cannot use web applications knowing (99% sure) that the owner of the website cannot use our personal information for any purpose other than giving us our service. There's only two kinds of clients here, though: those that explicitly want Haskell, and those than don't care about the programming language. Otherwise, you'll have to sell Haskell and, personally, I'm not that good a salesman (10% success, tops). - I've also ported Haskell designs to other programming languages (with small adaptations). I only found this cost-effective because the code in Haskell was not going to be thrown away.

Good luck. Please, let us know what you find.

Cheers, Ivan.

...
I had hoped that compiling Haskell to C with -fvia-C (or would it be just -C?) would allow Haskell to run in new, uncharted territory such as Android (with NDK), IOS, Google's NaCl, etc. But today I learned that GHC's C backend has been deprecated! Is it more difficult than I am imagining to get Haskell to work in these environments? Is it simply a matter of low interest in this kind of work? Or something more fundamental? Am I missing something?

I'm hoping that the Haskell->JavaScript efforts will mature enough to make Haskell viable for client-side web apps. (I think the first sign of this will be a self-hosting Haskell->JavaScript compiler.)

I use Haskell for Server-Side code with various web frameworks, but over the years more and more of the app logic is moved into client-side JavaScript, leaving the server-side code as little more than a simple validation and security layer over the database and other services. Haskell doesn't have any trouble with this, of course, but it's not exactly a role where it can shine. (Of course this is not true of ALL server-side code, just the kind of apps I have been writing.)

So anyway I'd like to request feedback: where can I use Haskell besides simple CLI utilities, dull server code, or project Euler problems? Even if it's just to contribute to getting Haskell in the environments mentioned above, any feedback is welcome!

Thanks for reading,

--J Arthur

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Vagif Verdi

1:03 p.m.

New subject: Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

Besides our web app and batch pdf generation procedures, i use haskell for internal one-off tasks. Often i am being asked to import various data to database from text/excel files. Haskell is an excellent tool for this. On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 5:30:28 PM UTC-7, Jonathan Geddes wrote:

...

I love Haskell. It is my absolute favorite language. But I have a very hard time finding places where I can actually use it!

I had hoped that compiling Haskell to C with -fvia-C (or would it be just -C?) would allow Haskell to run in new, uncharted territory such as Android (with NDK), IOS, Google's NaCl, etc. But today I learned that GHC's C backend has been deprecated! Is it more difficult than I am imagining to get Haskell to work in these environments? Is it simply a matter of low interest in this kind of work? Or something more fundamental? Am I missing something?

I'm hoping that the Haskell->JavaScript efforts will mature enough to make Haskell viable for client-side web apps. (I think the first sign of this will be a self-hosting Haskell->JavaScript compiler.)

I use Haskell for Server-Side code with various web frameworks, but over the years more and more of the app logic is moved into client-side JavaScript, leaving the server-side code as little more than a simple validation and security layer over the database and other services. Haskell doesn't have any trouble with this, of course, but it's not exactly a role where it can shine. (Of course this is not true of ALL server-side code, just the kind of apps I have been writing.)

So anyway I'd like to request feedback: where can I use Haskell besides simple CLI utilities, dull server code, or project Euler problems? Even if it's just to contribute to getting Haskell in the environments mentioned above, any feedback is welcome!

Thanks for reading,

--J Arthur

Michael Oswald

1 Jun 1 Jun

12:01 p.m.

New subject: Requesting Feedback: I Love Haskell, but can't find a place to use it

...

So anyway I'd like to request feedback: where can I use Haskell besides simple CLI utilities, dull server code, or project Euler problems? Even if it's just to contribute to getting Haskell in the environments mentioned above, any feedback is welcome!

Well I have used it for some not-so-typical Haskell tasks: - An installer (command line) for some other software in C++ (unpacking, installing COTS libraries, installing and setting up MySQL on different machines including replication, setting up and installing the software and also apply updates to it) - A satellite simulator for testing mission control systems. It's very basic but it can handle telecommands and arbitrary telemetry (definable with a DSL which is loaded and interpreted at runtime), as well as basic ground station routing messages, on-board queue simulation, on-board software upload/download simulation and also some statistics about sent telecommands. I actually used it for some telecommand performance measurements for a real mission control system for an existing satellite (which it simulated) as well as on debugging actions on the MCS. For me the main point was to see if I could implement this functionality in Haskell (there are other test-sims in C++ but with less functionality and still a lot bigger in LOC). Due to the imperative nature and my (ahem) limited abilities in Haskell the code is in parts very ugly, but it grows and is refactored if I need new features. Currently if I have time I am working on a GUI for it (otherwise it's just command line). - Various test programs to stimulate servers with input. Especially encoding/decoding of various (binary) protocols is far much easier and faster to write in Haskell. - Various conversion tools. E.g. currently I have a tool in the pipe (just in the beginning stage) to convert something like CSV output into a OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet for further processing/graphing/whatever. Also I'd like to have a kind of OpenDocument library to be able to generate reports, so this is the next step then. Due to my very limited time in the moment this is currently stalled. For me it would also be quite interesting to have a working CORBA implementation with Haskell (as we have some applications at work which use it), but I seem to be the only one. lg, Michael

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participants (7)

Brandon Allbery
Ivan Perez
Johannes Waldmann
Jonathan Geddes
Michael Oswald
Richard O'Keefe
Vagif Verdi