I have ever wondered how a committee could have made Haskell. My conclusion is the following: For one side there were many mathematicians involved, the authors of the most terse language(s) existent: the math notation. For the other, the lemma "avoid success at all costs" which kept the committee away of pressures for doing it quick and dirty and also freed it from deleterious individualities 2013/6/10 Tobias Dammers

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 05:41:05PM +0530, Zed Becker wrote:

...

Haskell, is arguably the best example of a design-by-committee language.

You do realize that "design-by-committee" is generally understood to refer to the antipattern where a committee discusses a design to death and delivers an inconsistent, mediocre spec, as opposed to a situation where a leader figure takes the loose ends, runs with them, and turns them into a coherent, inspiring whole?

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-- Alberto.

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 03:21:28PM +0200, Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:

Tom Ellis wrote:

...

Hear hear! Hopefully we, the Haskell community, will be able to support this endevour with our time and efforts.

Every Haskell user does this in their own way by use, feedback, uploads to Hackage, authoring wiki articles or blog articles or simply by helping people. The Haskell community has a huge momentum right now and the language is developed by smart people.

What does /not/ help is a thread like this. If you want to support the development of Haskell, don't unsafeCoerce people into making useless promises. Instead grab your web browser, text editor or whiteboard and do your part!

Indeed Ertugul, that's exactly what I mean. Tom

Hmmmmm... Haskell was /developed/ by teams, but we had BEFORE: hope, miranda, ML ... The heritage is quite important. And individuals (say, Mark Jones) contributed to Haskell constructs. So, the /design/ is not entirely "committe based"

1.

Promise to me, and the rest of the community, that Haskell will always spiritually remain the same clean, consistent programming language as it is now!

Yes. Dear Mom, dear Dad! Promise me that you will never die... I wish that for all of you. Jerzy Karczmarczuk

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 05:44:26PM +0400, MigMit wrote:

It really sounds rude, to demand promises from somebody who just gave you a big present.

Without wishing to preempt Zed Becker, I interpreted his email as an expression of delight at how well Haskell has been designed and of hope that it may endure, rather than literally as a demand for the Haskell committee to grant him promises. I hope I haven't misunderstood. Tom