[Haskell-cafe] Playing with ATs again

[Ryan Ingram]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
<ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 August 2010 16:48, Gregory Crosswhite <gcross at phys.washington.edu> wrote:
>>  On 8/4/10 11:40 PM, Andrew Coppin wrote:
>>>
>>> Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Don't forget, GHC is open source: if this lack really was "dumb" and
>>>> annoying you, there was nothing stopping you from rectifying this
>>>> situation up until now.
>>>
>>> Except that, in the real world, this is actually completely infeasible.
>>> Yes, I know it's the basic tenant of OSS that you can modify the program to
>>> do whatever you want. But in reality, something like GHC is far too large
>>> and complex for this to be a realistic possibility. And this holds for most
>>> other nontrivial software too.
>>
>> Fair enough, but if one can't do better one's self then one should be
>> careful about calling the work of others "dumb", which was the original
>> point.
>
> Exactly.  Either do it yourself or be grateful that someone has done
> _something_, even if it isn't as good as you like.  It's not like
> you're paying for it...

My bad, no offense was meant, and perhaps I should choose my words better.

I've read Manuel's papers and worked with Simon, and they're both very
smart people.  I wasn't commenting at all on the quality of their
implementation, but rather trying to make the point that it's really a
bug that it doesn't work, and, AFAIK, a bug that is going to be fixed.

I think everyone can relate to the frustration that occurs when you
are surprised by a feature being missing.  I actually think it's a
testament to the quality of GHC that things "just work" so often that
I can be so surprised when they don't.

  -- ryan