[Haskell-cafe] Re: nhc vs ghc

[Stefan O'Rear]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 10:44:45AM +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote:
> Hi
> 
> > > can anyone provide a concise list of the major differences between
> > > nhc98 and ghc? for example, can i build a cabal package with nhc98? i
> > > get that ghc and nhc98 are not interchangeable, otherwise i am not
> > > sure
> 
> The other major differences:
> 
> * nhc is unavailable on Windows
> * nhc programs run much slower
> * nhc has fewer users and fewer developers, meaning more bugs

There are also a few advantages:

* It was written on an Acorn A4000, an 80s-era PC with a whopping 3MB of
  memory; as such it is much more memory-friendly than GHC, which at the
  time wanted 16MB for normal use.

* It's unrelated to GHC, which means that the set of bugs are
  uncorrelated.  If you think GHC is doing something wrong, ask NHC for
  a second opinion.

* It's much easier to port than GHC.

(And an important disadvantage - The original author of NHC, Niklaus
Röjemo, has disappeared off the face of the Internet, and the acting
maintainer doesn't actually grok most of the code.)

Stefan
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