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A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

williamyaoh.com

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Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#21

Post by cpursley »

thewarrior wrote: post #17
cousin_it wrote: post #4

I think a simple web stack should aspire to the simplicity of the PHP stack, twenty years ago: 1) Create a directory "foo" on your server 2) Make a file called "bar.php" in that directory 3) Write "Hello World!" in the file 4) Open http://localhost/foo/bar.php in the browser and see "Hello World!" Lines of code or configuration so far: zero . 5) Add some actual code to bar.php 6) Reload the page and see the result Nu…

1) Install node js 2) npm install express 4) Define handler Seems simple enough ?

Simple, except for the Javascript and npm bits...

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#22

Post by williamdclt »

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #18
cousin_it wrote: post #4

I think a simple web stack should aspire to the simplicity of the PHP stack, twenty years ago: 1) Create a directory "foo" on your server 2) Make a file called "bar.php" in that directory 3) Write "Hello World!" in the file 4) Open http://localhost/foo/bar.php in the browser and see "Hello World!" Lines of code or configuration so far: zero . 5) Add some actual code to bar.php 6) Reload the page and see the result Nu…

I agree that software development has become (often) pointlessly over complicated in the past few years. For my personal projects I usually develop in Yii2, vanilla JS, SCSS, on MAMP. Source lives in Git, deploy via FTP. I track my progress on a simple kanban. I can push out really complex web applications in days. At work, currently we use headless Drupal 8 as an API layer, React/Angular frontend, automated deployme…

I could also edit live on my production server and the result would be the same: a website.

I'm not saying that modern stacks aren't more complicated than they need, but I use a React frontend, a React-Native app, silly microservices, a non-trivial git strategy, non-trivial Trello steps, security scans, automated deployment via CircleCI and yet release multiple times a day.

The biggest difference is that deployment always works, always passes tests, does not depends on who deploys, rollbacks automatically if healthchecks fail... You know, the sort of stuff that "reduces defects", "builds quality in", "fails fast" and all sort of concepts that people way smarter than us, working in industry way more mature than ours, have been elaborating for decades

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#23

Post by seagreen »

lalaithion wrote: post #13
seagreen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what we mean by Haskell. If we mean "Haskell the latest specification" that's Haskell 2010. I suppose we could think of it as pretty simple, though lazy evaluation means that any implementation of it is going to be complicated. However I don't know of a single company that uses plain Haskell 2010. They all use GHC (or more complex tools like GHCJS!) and GHC Haskell is a beast: https://downloads.haskell.…

And how many companies use a C++ standard? GCC and Clang both provide a large number of extensions. https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.8.5/gcc/C-Extensions.ht... https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.8.5/gcc/C_002b_002b-Ext...

OP: haskell is extremely complex.

Responder: not it's not (eg C++ is more complex)

Me: actually haskell is a complex, beastly language, eg check out the language extensions

You: but C++ is more complex!

Me: i agree

EDIT: Didn't mean to sound snarky, the discussion has just gotten really layered and I wanted to explain my position.

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#24

Post by Vosporos »

thewarrior wrote: post #17
cousin_it wrote: post #4

I think a simple web stack should aspire to the simplicity of the PHP stack, twenty years ago: 1) Create a directory "foo" on your server 2) Make a file called "bar.php" in that directory 3) Write "Hello World!" in the file 4) Open http://localhost/foo/bar.php in the browser and see "Hello World!" Lines of code or configuration so far: zero . 5) Add some actual code to bar.php 6) Reload the page and see the result Nu…

1) Install node js 2) npm install express 4) Define handler Seems simple enough ?

Simple, yes, but managing a MEAN stack (or even just Node + Express) is far from being "easy".

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#25

Post by seagreen »

agentultra wrote: post #14
seagreen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what we mean by Haskell. If we mean "Haskell the latest specification" that's Haskell 2010. I suppose we could think of it as pretty simple, though lazy evaluation means that any implementation of it is going to be complicated. However I don't know of a single company that uses plain Haskell 2010. They all use GHC (or more complex tools like GHCJS!) and GHC Haskell is a beast: https://downloads.haskell.…

Fair enough there are some combinations of compiler extensions that don't interact well and I've written enough type level code to know which ones to stay away from. The C++ move semantics are standard though and have lots of unintended consequences to make easy-to-describe constructors incredibly difficult to implement in practice. My point was that saying Haskell is extremely complex is not technically correct. It'…

> It's a qualitative statement and disingenuous. Complex relative to what?

Complex relative to most programming languages.

C++ is more complex. That says very little. C++ is an extreme outlier.

I think Haskellers do a disservice to people they're trying to convince to do haskell by saying it's not complex. Haskell has a zillion extensions and crazy features, most of which show up in at least some popular Hackage libraries. Arrow syntax! Type families! Data kinds! Pattern synonyms! View patterns! Existential types! Rank-N types! The list goes on and on.

PS: I think Haskell is awesome and one of the best languages out there. I've written a pretty decent amount of FOSS haskell stuff. Complex doesn't mean bad.

EDIT: The complexity doesn't come just through language extensions. The process GHC goes through to produce fast code is crazy too. It works, but it's not simple.

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#26

Post by seagreen »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #15
seagreen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what we mean by Haskell. If we mean "Haskell the latest specification" that's Haskell 2010. I suppose we could think of it as pretty simple, though lazy evaluation means that any implementation of it is going to be complicated. However I don't know of a single company that uses plain Haskell 2010. They all use GHC (or more complex tools like GHCJS!) and GHC Haskell is a beast: https://downloads.haskell.…

First, that was a nice article. Second, I agree with you that Haskell does not have to be too complicated. I only ever use a few language extensions, I use a subset of the language, and try to do repl oriented development. The downside of my simple approach is that reading other people’s code takes real effort because I am likely to not understand many of the idioms and techniques that other people use. Programming s…

We're on the exact same page :)

I even think there's a place for fancy Haskell, but I think people reach for it a little too often.

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#27

Post by Symmetry »

agentultra wrote: post #7
artfulhippo wrote: post #2

Haskell is extremely complex, and that’s the point: to isolate complexity at the language level, where safe patterns can be researched, developed, and then scaled out to arbitrary applications. Please call this “Towards a simple Haskell web stack” or something else less oxymoronic.

> Haskell is extremely complex I extremely disagree. I think C++ is extremely complex. Haskell is simple by comparison [0]. Once you understand enough Haskell to write basic programs in it this stack is roughly similar in scope to a Ruby + Sinatra or Python + Flask web application. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNRju6_yn3o

I entirely agree about the language itself being a comfortable middle weight, somewhere around the order of Python. But both languages give you a lot of scope to make things complicated and there are much stronger norms against making code as clever as possible in Python than in Haskell. Is there a Pythonic Haskell movement? Because if there isn't there should be.

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#28

Post by bad_user »

cousin_it wrote: post #4

I think a simple web stack should aspire to the simplicity of the PHP stack, twenty years ago: 1) Create a directory "foo" on your server 2) Make a file called "bar.php" in that directory 3) Write "Hello World!" in the file 4) Open http://localhost/foo/bar.php in the browser and see "Hello World!" Lines of code or configuration so far: zero . 5) Add some actual code to bar.php 6) Reload the page and see the result Nu…

Doing PHP programming was my first programming job, lasted for about 3 years.

While I agree with you about the allure of PHP, to be honest, I will never choose PHP again or touch any projects that uses PHP.

PHP is an awful, obsolete language, patched again and again to make it more modern. It's like wearing an old leather jacket that has been patched repeatedly, yet it still has a nasty smell. This is entirely subjective of course and I'll take old and trustworthy technologies technologies any day of the week. Except PHP isn't trustworthy and it never was.

I have never seen a high level language plagued with so many security issues and this extends to apps built in PHP, like Wordpress. You could attribute that to sloppy coding, or to its popularity, yet if you take the top web vulnerabilities in the wild, most of them (like SQL injections, or remote code executions, or stupid bugs related to implicit conversions, session tampering, etc) aren't possible with modern libraries built in static languages, or at least very hard to accomplish by accident.

For me there's also the issue that PHP is really inefficient. Any PHP app will crash your average server if it hits Hacker News, unless you end up caching the pages via Varnish or similar tricks that essentially avoid hitting the PHP interpreter. Configuring Wordpress to withstand a traffic spike can be very challenging, the best solution is to pre-generate the website, thus making it static, which is very weird considering for how long WP and PHP have been on the scene, you'd think there are better solutions by now.

You say PHP is easy. I say that PHP is and will always be a security and scalability nightmare. And sure, it allows you to start something fast, but I can start as fast with my favorite technologies and without hitting a wall later.

And of course, PHP is nice for beginners, but at the same time I believe you're painting yourself into a corner and it's very hard to grow from there. Besides the issues above, a beginner will be curious about trying new things. CLI utilities, desktop or phone apps, statistics, automation, embedded programming, etc. PHP is unsuitable basically for anything that's not querying MySQL and then spitting an HTML back, which means the learning curve will be worse, because you've picked a very limited hammer.

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#29

Post by james_s_tayler »

williamdclt wrote: post #22
invalidusernam3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that software development has become (often) pointlessly over complicated in the past few years. For my personal projects I usually develop in Yii2, vanilla JS, SCSS, on MAMP. Source lives in Git, deploy via FTP. I track my progress on a simple kanban. I can push out really complex web applications in days. At work, currently we use headless Drupal 8 as an API layer, React/Angular frontend, automated deployme…

I could also edit live on my production server and the result would be the same: a website. I'm not saying that modern stacks aren't more complicated than they need, but I use a React frontend, a React-Native app, silly microservices, a non-trivial git strategy, non-trivial Trello steps, security scans, automated deployment via CircleCI and yet release multiple times a day. The biggest difference is that deployment a…

Yup. I think people forget that things aren't the way they used to be because we made forward progress. Maybe that means things got more complex. It also means more things became possible and it became possible to not have things happen which you wish didn't.

If everything worked so fine and dandy in the good old days, we'd still be there.

Re: A Dead-Simple Web Stack in Haskell

#30

Post by james_s_tayler »

bad_user wrote: post #28
cousin_it wrote: post #4

I think a simple web stack should aspire to the simplicity of the PHP stack, twenty years ago: 1) Create a directory "foo" on your server 2) Make a file called "bar.php" in that directory 3) Write "Hello World!" in the file 4) Open http://localhost/foo/bar.php in the browser and see "Hello World!" Lines of code or configuration so far: zero . 5) Add some actual code to bar.php 6) Reload the page and see the result Nu…

Doing PHP programming was my first programming job, lasted for about 3 years. While I agree with you about the allure of PHP, to be honest, I will never choose PHP again or touch any projects that uses PHP. PHP is an awful, obsolete language, patched again and again to make it more modern. It's like wearing an old leather jacket that has been patched repeatedly, yet it still has a nasty smell. This is entirely subjec…

Wow. That was the best insult-PHP-rant I've seen in my life.
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