On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 10:36:32AM -0700, John A. De Goes wrote:

...

The number of applications requiring the implementation of a custom web server is an insignificant fraction of the number of applications requiring a messaging system. I don't think anyone would dispute Haskell's ability to do low-level, raw networking, of the type that few people actually need to do. It's the higher level stuff where there's a huge amount of room for improvement.

I disagree on both points.

Haskell has had somewhat of a deficit in the low-level networking stuff, not even supporting IPv6 in the standard stack until just recently. (That is, things like AF_INET6 were not present.)

I think it has pretty much caught up by now though.

If you think Haskell has caught up by now, then you DO NOT disagree with my statement that "[no one] would dispute Haskell's ability to do low-level, raw networking." Which makes me wonder what you mean by, "I disagree on both points."

On the other hand, I see nothing in Haskell that would prevent its use for any of your purposes. There are numerous high-level web infrastructures already. Perhaps they are more or less suited to your needs, but that's a library issue, not a language issue.

In other words, to quote myself, "it's the higher level stuff where there's a huge amount of room for [library] improvement." Nothing in the Haskell language prevents its use for high-level networking. But the sad fact of the matter is that there is no library support for it. So applications that need such networking today are better off written in Erlang. Regards, John