[Haskell-cafe] Very freaky

[Andrew Coppin]

Jim Burton wrote:
> Andrew Coppin wrote:
>   
>> On the one hand, it feels exciting to be around a programming language 
>> where there are deep theoretical discoveries and new design territories 
>> to be explored. (Compared to Haskell, the whole C / C++ / Java / 
>> JavaScript / Delphi / VisualBasic / Perl / Python thing seems so boring.)
>>
>> On the other hand... WHAT THE HECK DOES ALL THAT TEXT *MEAN*?! >_<
>>
>>
>>     
> I agree, it's exciting to use Haskell because of its theoretical
> underpinning and the sense of it as a lab for PL ideas.

The other downside is that you end up with a world where most of the 
"tools" are in fact one-man research projects or small toys.

There are a few good, powerful, useful things out there. (GHC and Parsec 
immediately spring to mind.) But there's also a vast number of really 
tiny projects which don't seem to be terrifically well supported. Kind 
of makes me sad; Haskell seems almost doomed to be a language with 
fantastic potential, but little real-world traction.