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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#91

Post by umvi »

nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

Doesn't stop people from trying to have the cake and eat it too. I think I remember reading about a FOSS project on GitHub that put a clause in the license that said something along the lines of "this software is free to use except for purposes we deem immoral in which case you can't use it" (sorry, I can't remember which project it was)

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#92

Post by fsckboy »

so many people are fond of saying "porn launched all these different technologies" (I say it that way because I am not fond of saying it) that I think this post would better be summed up as "crypto is the new porn"

meaning, it more than doesn't matter if a technology finds a unsavory butlucrative market, precisely that lucre is what funds early stage development of the technology to the point where it can grow into commodity markets.

(and this is more "the elephant in the Haskell room" than any type of Haskell elephant)

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#93

Post by burkaman »

nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

I realize the article is very vaguely written, but I don't think the argument is "Haskell has been used for cryptocurrency and that taints it forever."

I read it as "A significant portion of jobs and funding in the Haskell ecosystem come from cryptocurrency organizations, giving them a lot of influence over the future of the language and the community." It's about who controls development of the tool right now, not how the tool might be used, or who has been involved in the past.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#94

Post by Thomashuet »

nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

I think you're misunderstanding the author here. He doesn't argue that people shouldn't use Haskell because it's used in crypto currencies, quite the opposite he seems to love Haskell and want people to use it. His worry is that being associated with crooks will make the Haskell community less attractive.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#95

Post by nine_k »

umvi wrote: post #91
nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

Doesn't stop people from trying to have the cake and eat it too. I think I remember reading about a FOSS project on GitHub that put a clause in the license that said something along the lines of "this software is free to use except for purposes we deem immoral in which case you can't use it" (sorry, I can't remember which project it was)

Yes, there's a nice funny joke of this nature in the JSON license: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." [1]

I remember IBM had to obtain a separate license without this clause, to insure themselves against potential nice funny lawsuits claiming the breach of that clause.

[1]: http://www.json.org/license.html

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#97

Post by rstarast »

leshow wrote: post #58

Mentions FP Complete, who worked on cardano I think. So is the accusation that cardano is running a shady exchange and stealing from people? I don't follow the crypto space, but it seems like we might actually want to know which companies are being accused of being shady.

The accusation is that the whole crypto space is shady. There is no value being created, instead investors are being defrauded. And part of the con game is pretending to have very intelligent people keep making progress building very complicated things. Haskell works great to give that impression, though Rust seems to work just fine these days, too.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#98

Post by duxup »

So Haskell may have a lot of ties to cryptocurrency and related things.

That makes me wonder:

If a language has a large group of what might be seen as unsavory groups, people, or just a lot of folks with a specific ideology / opinion(s). (let's just assume it is true for argument's sake here, I don't know enough / I'm not really saying it is true about Haskell)

DOES that change how the language develops?

Does it change, anything?

Have we ever seen that happen before?

Granted even if not I'm not dismissing the article, just wondering.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#99

Post by frank2 »

ajuc wrote: post #90
nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

IBM helped with Holocaust. It also invented PC.

If you're trying to say that IBM invented the home computer or the personal computer, you are off by about 6 years. (Home computers became available around 1975; home computers that didn't not need any assembly by the buyer became available in 1976 or 1977; the IBM PC became available in 1981.)

If you're trying to say that IBM was the first to officially name a personal computer "PC", I'll give you that one.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#100

Post by prionassembly »

ogogmad wrote: post #39
prionassembly wrote: post #34

> "what economists call non-productive assets" That's not a technical term nor a "term of art" in economics. Google Scholar returns results from management and accounting journals, as well as some pseudo-economics ("heterodox") pamphlets.

How do you know what's "pseudo" and not "pseudo" in economics? Given that it isn't a science. I'm genuinely curious.

There's something called "economics", much like there is something called "psychiatry". [Maybe we need more sociology in policy-making. Maybe economics is too narrow a view on the world. But it is a specific field of study.]

There are good reasons to be critical of psychiatry, but it's a red flag if someone tries to pass palmistry off as psychiatry.

The problem here is that economics does have some prestige still, which is why predatory political activists try to pass their "heterodox" writings as belonging to it.

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