Why isn't Haskell mainstream?
Joe Armstrong
This thread has been puzzling me -
Most of the posts seem to take it for granted that:
1) Haskell is not mainstream
2) Not being mainstream is a bad thing
3) Being mainstream is desirable
I would question all of these:
a) Haskell *is* mainstream (in it's niche :-)
b) Being mainstream has a lot of disadvantages
- You can't change anything
- A lot of people write crappy programs in you language and the language
gets the blame
- Well know big companies add additional features to make the language
"easier to use"
- Trivial and self-evident features get added to the language and
patented - then you get sued for doing what is obvious
- ...
If you want the freedom to be creative it's better to keep out of
the mainstream.
A desirable state of affairs is
- enough interest to avoid "starvation" (IE its not much fun to
be the *only* person in the world who thinks Haskell is fun)
- enough interest to generate funding for research money and to
ensure their are payed jobs using the technology
- not too much interest so that you can't change anything
- not too much interest so that "big companies" want to
take over everything.
Just think, if Haskell did become main-stream half the people who post here
would have to find something else to play with :-)
/Joe
Yoann Padioleau
> This thread has been puzzling me -
>
> Most of the posts seem to take it for granted that:
>
> 1) Haskell is not mainstream
> 2) Not being mainstream is a bad thing
> 3) Being mainstream is desirable
>
> I would question all of these:
>
> a) Haskell *is* mainstream (in it's niche :-)
what is this niche ?
--
Yoann Padioleau, INSA de Rennes, France,
Opinions expressed here are only mine. Je n'écris qu'à titre personnel.
**____ Get Free. Be Smart. Simply use Linux and Free Software. ____**
Ryo Furue
> This thread has been puzzling me -
>
> Most of the posts seem to take it for granted that:
>
> 1) Haskell is not mainstream
> 2) Not being mainstream is a bad thing
> 3) Being mainstream is desirable
>
> I would question all of these:
> b) Being mainstream has a lot of disadvantages
>
Notwithstanding them, I think being much more popular,
if not exactly mainstream, is desirable. Without enough
publicity and general interest, many of those who would
potentially benefited from this wonderful language, Haskell,
remain ignorant of it. Some of them who happen to hear of
it would look at it suspiciously, precisely because it's
obscure. ("Why, if it's any good, it must have become popular
already.") The very few of them who find the language
interesting might be put off because of the scarcity of
good introductory materials. There are different poeple
with different mind-sets, so, many different introductory
materials are desired. "Haskell for Fortran Programmers",
"Unix Administration Using Haskell", etc. (Could somebody
write a Haskell Unix admin tutorial for me? :-)
I for one regard myself as fortunate to come across the
language. I'm hunting for interesting languages from time
to time and happened to find Haskell only recently. People
around me have never even heard of it, and think C++ is "the"
ultimate (in a sense) language. What a pity (and loss).
Ryo
Ken Moore
<furu...@ccsr.u-tokyo.ac.jp> writes
>People
>around me have never even heard of it, and think C++ is "the"
>ultimate (in a sense) language. What a pity (and loss).
I tend to think of C++ as Algol 68 done badly (:-).
--
Ken Moore
k...@mooremusic.org.uk
Web site: http://www.mooremusic.org.uk/
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