[Haskell-cafe] Haskell not ready for Foo [was: Re: Hypothetical Haskell job in New York]

[John A. De Goes]

> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 10:36:32AM -0700, John A. De Goes wrote:
>>
>> The number of applications requiring the implementation of a custom  
>> web
>> server is an insignificant fraction of the number of applications
>> requiring a messaging system. I don't think anyone would dispute
>> Haskell's ability to do low-level, raw networking, of the type that  
>> few
>> people actually need to do. It's the higher level stuff where  
>> there's a
>> huge amount of room for improvement.
>
> I disagree on both points.
>
> Haskell has had somewhat of a deficit in the low-level networking
> stuff, not even supporting IPv6 in the standard stack until just
> recently.  (That is, things like AF_INET6 were not present.)
>
> I think it has pretty much caught up by now though.

If you think Haskell has caught up by now, then you DO NOT disagree  
with my statement that "[no one] would dispute Haskell's ability to do  
low-level, raw networking."

Which makes me wonder what you mean by, "I disagree on both points."

> On the other hand, I see nothing in Haskell that would prevent its use
> for any of your purposes.  There are numerous high-level web
> infrastructures already.  Perhaps they are more or less suited to your
> needs, but that's a library issue, not a language issue.

In other words, to quote myself, "it's the higher level stuff where  
there's a huge amount of room for [library] improvement."

Nothing in the Haskell language prevents its use for high-level  
networking. But the sad fact of the matter is that there is no library  
support for it. So applications that need such networking today are  
better off written in Erlang.

Regards,

John