Comment by jpr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpr | Hacker News Reader

When you subscribe to some ideology that can be described by a simple word, it is easy to dismiss all problems encountered while exercising that ideology by saying that "you are not being X enough", whether X is socialist, capitalist, vegan, carnivore, functional, object-oriented, static, dynamic, free, proprietary or whatever.

I used to program in Haskell for fun and school and I liked it. I find it very well thought out language. I may very well come back to programming in Haskell when I encounter a suitable project.

But there is a tendency among Haskeller's to get too caught up in praising purity and laziness, while ignoring the nice practical aspects of the language that could enable it to rise to be an even greater language.

I'm not saying that author is guilty of this, this is just a general observation. And I must admit that I'm not quite up to date of what's up with Haskell. My point is that Haskell is great for reasons other than purity and laziness, too.

That isn't true. There is an important justification for purity in Haskell. It increases the correctness of programs. There are plenty of important ideas that use only a single word, and the fact that they use a single word doesn't say anything good or bad about them.

That isn't true. There is an important justification for State control in Communism. It increases the fairness of societies. There are plenty of important ideas that use Communism to achieve their ends, and the fact that they use Communism doesn't say anything good or bad about them.

The nature of programming is that you use the right tool for the right job. The question is what kind of tool we want Haskell to be.

"I want Haskell to be most useful only in specific, limited situations where puritanical program correctness is imperative" is a legitimate answer to this question, as is "I want Haskell to be practical enough to be general-purpose". And if a programmer looks at a problem and says "Haskell isn't right for this situation; I'm going to use something else", then you or I, a Haskell advocate, may be okay with that.

I think what you're seeing here is not that we're dismissing all problems but that we look at some problems (say, distributed systems) and think "Man, our lives would be so much easier if we were purer." Of course there are trade offs, but when these new circumstances come up, it does nicely vindicate the extremists. :-)

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