[Haskell-cafe] Why not Darcs?

[Maciej Marcin Piechotka]

On Sat, 2011-04-23 at 12:31 +0200, Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:
> David Terei wrote:
> > Good chance you've already read this but if not here is a good post by
> >  Linus about his take on the problems with darcs:
> > 
> > http://markmail.org/message/vk3gf7ap5auxcxnb
> 
> I always have to smile at the complaint that something is "academic". :D
> 
> You know, like purely functional programming, that's soo academic. It's 
> centered around some academic ideas, like mathematical functions, 
> higher-rank types, monads and zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms, that 
> have absolutely no relevance in real life, and that just don't work in 
> practice. You do *not* want to write whole programs that way. At some
> point, you need something that works at another level than pure 
> functions. What the *hell* do you do?
> 
> I think a better invective would be "amazing".
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> Heinrich Apfelmus

To be fair he "realize[s] that's a pretty weak flame, and I'm sorry". He
gives reason why he thinks it have no meaning in real live like:

"Fundmantal example: somebody has a problem/bug. Tell me how to tell a
developer what his exact version is - without creating new tags, and
without having to synchronize the archives. Just tell the developer what
version he is at."

I'm not English native speaker but there are 2 reasons why we may assume
that he does not think "academic == irrelevant":

 - quotes around word usually denotes non-literal meaning (in this
context)
 - IIRC "that" can be used only in defing relative clauses. Therefore he
does not think (or he might not think) academic idea have no meaning in
real life but those particular ideas.

I'm not saying that he's right but he implied much less that it one
would assume from quote <<"academic">>.

Regards

I think that quotes around the word + structure of sentence (relative
clause with that which implies it is non-defining) 
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