Hi, Andrew Martin wrote:
Aside from the technical reasons, which have already been discussed and decided, confused students dictating language and library design has never worked out well.
Neither arguing for or against here, but let it just be clear that it is *not* just students who have been bitten by this particular change, but also very experienced Haskellers. And they don't like it a bit. Besides, is there *any* concrete evidence language and library design necessarily must be confusing to students in order to work for real applications? I'd say there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For example, what effectively is no more than Haskell 98 is used very successfully within Standard Chartered bank, which probably has the largest team of Haskell programmers in the world. And they made a very deliberate, carefully considered choice to keep their in-house version of Haskell simple. Now, I am obviously not arguing to move back to Haskell 98. But I think this example very convincingly demonstrates that conceptual simplicity can go a very long way indeed, and that lots of features and extensions that are seen as very important by some, in the bigger picture perhaps were not so essential after all. And maybe the cost imposed on the rest of the community outweighs their benefit. Best, /Henrik This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.