[Haskell-cafe] Language extensions

[Andrew Coppin]

Jim Burton wrote:
> Speaking as someone who, like you, came to the language recently and for
> whom many of haskell's outer corners are still confusing, I should firstly
> say that I can see where you're coming from but that it puzzles me as to why
> you think things ought to be obvious or why, when something isn't obvious to
> you, it must be useless? Could the answer be that it will take some time
> before you understand the motivation for features that don't seem natural to
> you? You might need some patience and study along with everything else, I
> know I do (and people have been generous with links to work that explains
> the motivation). I only say this because you seem, bizarrely, to be
> suggesting that you could improve things by undoing the work of all these
> "scary people" as you call them in another post, whilst admitting that you
> don't understand it.
>   

Haskell 98 does an excellent job of being extremely simple, yet almost 
unbelievably powerful. Almost every day, I am blown away by how powerful 
it is. I suppose it just defies belief that you could possibly need even 
*more* power than is already in the language... and also, as I've 
mentioned, Haskell being simple is one of the most appealing things 
about it. I dislike conceptual complexity. Still, it's only my personal 
opinion, and the decision isn't actually up to me...