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Comment by asdasf | Hacker News Reader

>Haskell strikes me as very clever.

It is not. You should check it out some time. For purposes of this post I will pretend haskell and ghc are one in the same (ghc is the most popular haskell compiler). Haskell is built around a very simple, straightforward core language (shockingly enough called "core"). There is massive resistance to adding anything to haskell that can not be expressed in core and would require changing it. Haskell values simple, powerful abstractions that can be widely re-used. Haskell has not taken over the world because it doesn't want to. Python has not taken over the world either, I doubt many people would claim it is because python is too hard or too complex. Taking over the world does not appear to have any correlation with being a good language.

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There is good and then there is good.

A lot of what HN perceives as good I perceive as a problem that I will be left to solve.

I'm old, I'm over 50, got kids, spend a fair amount of my pile of ability each week trying to coach those kids in hockey.

Still working on the company, still trying to make money, still trying to keep it going. Every time someone shows up with something like Haskell I either beat it out of them or I fire them.

I'm sorry but I don't have the energy to deal with your new cool language. I've got a company to keep going, a life to live, I just want to take care of our customers and do it in a way that the next guy can understand and support.

Haskell might be God's gift to programming, I don't care. My job has nothing to do with making people like you happy. I've got customers I need to take care of, Haskell doesn't help. I've got employees I need to take care of, Haskell doesn't help (we are weird in that we've been around for 15 years and most of my guys are still here, we're all getting old and when you get old all that clever shit starts to look like stuff you can't support).

We recently added some pretty complex stuff to BitKeeper, basically a file system and a VM system. For a frigging source management system. In user space. Life is hard enough in C, you want to toss Haskell into that mix? Really? Come interview with us and you'll run screaming from Haskell and everything like it.

I'm old and I fire people who try to innovate in my company with new technical ideas seems like a weak argument.

If you don't care about new technology and would rather focus on your owns hockey, that is fine, but please don't go on the attack(1). It demotivates people who want to innovate with new "clever shit"

1. It was not a direct attack, but I would consider making a point against something then purposely ignoring an experts defense in at least the same category

You said it seems clever. I explained that it is the opposite. Why did you feel the appropriate response to that information was a random crazy rant about how old and cranky you are? If the idea of learning something offends you then don't learn, that's fine. But don't pitch a fit when someone corrects a misconception you are repeating.

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