An interesting question. What is the goal of Haskell'? Is it to, like Python 3000, fix warts in the language in an (somewhat) incompatible way or is it to just standardize current practice? I think we need both, I just don't know which of the two Haskell' is. -- Johan On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Chris Smith <cdsmith@twu.net> wrote:
There appears to be some question as to the backward compatibility goals of Haskell'. Perhaps it's worth bringing out into the open.
From conversations I've had and things I've read, I've always gathered that the main goal of Haskell' is to address the slightly embarrassing fact that practically no one actually writes code in Haskell, if by Haskell we mean the most recent completed language specification. This obviously argues strongly for a high degree of backward compatibility.
On the other hand, I am assuming everyone agrees that we don't want to replicate Java, which (in my view, anyway) is rapidly becoming obsolete because of an eagerness to make the language complex, inconsistent, and generally outright flawed in order to avoid even the most unlikely of broken code.
-- Chris
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