The Haskell Elephant in the Room • Hacker News Board

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#111

Post by ojnabieoot » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #68

I get why he doesn't like crypto currency stuff. Why is it so toxic if haskell is used for it? Is there a suggestion that those that participate in coin related projects should be persona non grata. Is there really no discussion about software as a dual use technology?

The issue the author is worried about is that the crypto companies are taking advantage of Haskell's public prestige to imply a level of robustness and rigor that doesn't actually exist: this incredibly incredibly shady company can't be that shady since they're using such fancy technology.

> In this new era the Haskell community itself has simply become a tool to buy legitimacy and pump token values. The reputation of our community is now used to defraud the public and convince non-technical users of the soundness of an utterly unsound investment.

So when people realize that 50% of crypto entrepreneurs are scammers and the other 50% are deluded, and the bubble pops, there is a serious concern that Haskell will be publicly understood as a "cryptocurrency" language and will suffer a reputational hit.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#112

Post by pythonaut_16 » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

unicornmama wrote: post #106

raphlinus wrote: post #28

I've been concerned about this for Rust too, as a lot of the published jobs and high profile projects (including Libra) are in the cryptocurrency sector. For example, one of the most promising rival GUI toolkits, iced, is being sponsored by Cryptowatch. Fortunately, the growth of other sectors is robust enough that if all cryptocurrency were to fall into the ocean, Rust would be impacted but not massively so.

I suspect that’s because of the crypto boom. New tech is adopted by new startups, many (maybe even most) new startups are in the crypto space.

Crypto in particular has lots of requirements that would be served by Rust and Haskell that might make them more appealing; where a traditional web startup that mainly serves web traffic can easily choose between Ruby, Python, Javascript, Elixir, etc.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#113

Post by kreetx » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

Although I think this article is informative about pointing out the crypto connection (there sure are many well known haskell devs related to crypto, to Cardano specifically), but I think it's way too negative. There are scams in cryptocurrencies, sure, but do some of them have real value? I think they do.

But perhaps somebody knows the answer to these questions instead:

- is Cardano itself a scam? (= are the people related immoral?)

- are there more cryptocurrencies developed in haskell and are these scams?

Other than that, I don't really see the influence on the ecosystem - what are some concrete examples here?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#114

Post by cinntaile » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #93

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…

I have re-read the blog post and I can't find what you mention.

The blog post is basically telling us that cryptocurrencies and its leaders are a giant scam and they don't contribute anything of value to society.

Your interpretation is very generous if you ask me. A blog post with that angle would be interesting to read though. It would have more to do with the Haskell ecosystem than this one and it would be good to have that discussion if the cryptocurrency influence on the ecosystem is too big.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#115

Post by chriswarbo » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

krick wrote: post #85

I don't really care for how naïve this description of "how economy works" is or isn't, but being upset that instead of Haskell being used virtually nowhere, it is finally used somewhere is pretty hilarious.

Haskell's unofficial motto is "avoid 'success at all costs'", which is referenced near the end of the article. Piggybacking on crypto fraud would be a cost that's worth avoiding.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#116

Post by raphlinus » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #98

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 chan…

Two things come to mind as relevant to this query.

First, the Red language (a variant of Rebol) tied itself to blockchain and created a token, though looking at their homepage now this seems less of a central focus.

Second, the Urbit project (which incorporates the Nock and Hoon languages, among other things), was founded by a controversial neo-reactionary figure. The project seems to be moving forward without him, and does not seem to be promoting those ideologies, but still carries that association. In addition to that, the "business model" for Urbit also seems to be tied to cryptocurrency.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#117

Post by HelloNurse » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

prionassembly wrote: post #37

danpalmer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is it about Haskell that makes it a hot candidate for use in cryptocurrency applications? The community opinion is that Haskell is good for building robust and correctly behaving applications. There's some evidence that very strong type systems can help with this. Financial software is an area where people typically want deep correctness guarantees, another good example area being cryptography. Between these I…

Apparently there's "right wing" people in Haskell now. This is such a paper thin threat on unspecified persons who must know they're being targeted. Seriously, I don't think the readership of HN is in any disagreement about how new cryptocurrencies are "short long con" jobs, but the author teases that the influx of this money is toxic to the Haskell community because... right wing people?

Are you saying that cryptoscammers are "right wing", or that threatening cryptoscammers to get rid of them is "right wing"? In what sense dealing with "unsavory varieties" can be considered a partisan issue?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#118

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #104

frank2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It did create a personal computer which was (1) easy to clone and (2) easy to extend with ISA cards. This openness made it a huge success, leading to an explosion of PC-compatible machines. Most other makers, from Apple to Amiga, vigorously protected their small private markets where they dominated. The original Macintosh has explicitly removed all the expansion capabilities that e.g. Apple II had.

S-100 was open.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#119

Post by cies » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

I dont share the concern. I remember that the Haskell project took a lot MS money in research grants, and this was discussed as "potentially damaging to the project".

Crypto currency is no different for me from other financial products: they have the potential to be very dangerous for the users of such services. Now often this is because of a lack of information (ponzi schemes, sub-prime mortgage packages), but with crypto all the rules of the game are opensource :)

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#120

Post by wmf » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

jcbrand wrote: post #81

I found the description of the cryptocurrency-space as a religion well-written and interesting. Of course, comparisons such as that are relatively common and has been made many times for the free software movement as well for example. However, his criticisms of cryptocurrencies are quite off IMO. > However cryptocurrency companies do not produce anything, instead they offer synthetic financial products which are mark…

Out of a thousand cryptocurrencies you found two that are not harmful; congratulations. It's virtually impossible for people to discover the good stuff without being radicalized by the bad stuff.