[Haskell-cafe] Why the Prelude must die

Chris Eidhof chris at eidhof.nl
Sat Mar 24 01:11:18 EDT 2007


> Given all these issues, I consider the only reasonable option is to
> discard the Prelude entirely.  There will be no magic modules.
> Everything will be an ordinary library.  HOFs like (.) are available
> from Control.Function.  List ops come from Data.List.  Any general
> abstractions can be added in abstract Sequence, Monad, etc. modules.
> Haskell will regain the kind of organic evolution whose lack
> currently causes Haskell to lose its lead over Python et al by the
> day.
I basically agree with a lot of the things you say. The only thing  
is: it's so convenient to have the Prelude. I can just start writing  
my haskell programs and don't have to worry about all kinds of  
imports. And you'll end up being repetitive: you'll import (.) and  
stuff like that in _every_ file. Yeah, this will definitely be more  
modular, but if we go for it, it's going to be so much more (tedious)  
work to create a new program.

-chris


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