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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#191

Post by leotaku »

p0llard wrote: post #182
exdsq wrote: post #160

Weird, seeing this is Stephen Diehls company summary: "Automate financial controls and processes in your corporate treasury with inter-company loans, virtual account management, powerful APIs and a distributed ledger made for financial audibility & compliance." https://www.adjoint.io/

What are you getting at? There's a pretty big difference between corporate treasury software and cryptocurrency scams? Unless you're trying to argue that anything related to finance is a scam? I don't see what point you're trying to make, it seems such an irrelevant comment that it makes me question your motive and wonder if you're trying to smear Stephen.

I think they are trying to imply that, because some crypto projects are targeting similar markets, there might be some conflict of interest that motivated Diehl to create his post.

To me this reads less like a smear and more just "this could be why he dislikes crypto that much".

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#192

Post by exdsq »

p0llard wrote: post #182
exdsq wrote: post #160

Weird, seeing this is Stephen Diehls company summary: "Automate financial controls and processes in your corporate treasury with inter-company loans, virtual account management, powerful APIs and a distributed ledger made for financial audibility & compliance." https://www.adjoint.io/

What are you getting at? There's a pretty big difference between corporate treasury software and cryptocurrency scams? Unless you're trying to argue that anything related to finance is a scam? I don't see what point you're trying to make, it seems such an irrelevant comment that it makes me question your motive and wonder if you're trying to smear Stephen.

He's working on the same ledger tech but centralised, and calling out firms working on blockchains unrelated to scams like OneCoin.

Edit: To be clear, I like his blog posts normally and am not trying to smear him. I'm just saying it's not a fair comparison.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#193

Post by asddubs »

archgoon wrote: post #166
cinntaile wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they don't contribute anything of value to society. They appear to be funding Haskell development.

is that worth however many percent of the worlds energy usage?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#194

Post by shpongled »

mcguire wrote: post #186
shpongled wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider Stephen to be an extremist when it comes to stuff like this. I follow him on twitter, and he frequently tweets things like: "More programmers should have the moral fortitude to stand up to the Facebook employees in their communities. This is not a socially acceptable career. Facebook employees have chosen to turn their skills on poisoning the very communities that gave them opportunities to thrive." [0] "P…

Well, to be honest, the negative beliefs about Facebook and Palantir are pretty common; I suspect rather a lot of people here would agree that Facebook is "poisoning the very communities that gave them opportunities to thrive" and Palantir is creating "a nightmare surveillance state". If that is the case, it seems like Stephen would be just a little less hypocritical than most, trying to convince programmers to actua…

I'm certainly not going to argue against your points here, since I agree with them, by and large. I personally am not a fan of FB or Palantir, and I suspect I dislike the surveillance state more than the average HN reader. My comment was more on his word choice (which I find to be a bit hyperbolic)

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#195

Post by mcguire »

sanxiyn wrote: post #45
the_af wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. The article is not about the Haskell language itself -- i.e. not a rant about technical issues -- but about its community and consulting companies getting (allegedly) entangled with crypto businesses. "Making a deal with the devil". That's why the author rants about crypto and not about Haskell itself.

I am not sure what is "alleged" about Haskell consultancies getting cryptocurrency money. It is pretty easy to confirm. Both Well-Typed and FP Complete got money from Cardano and posted to their blog what amount to advertisements for Cardano. Google a bit if you care.

"...posted to their blog what amount to advertisements for Cardano."

And that would seem to be exactly what Stephen is complaining about.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#196

Post by greg7mdp »

p0llard wrote: post #182
exdsq wrote: post #160

Weird, seeing this is Stephen Diehls company summary: "Automate financial controls and processes in your corporate treasury with inter-company loans, virtual account management, powerful APIs and a distributed ledger made for financial audibility & compliance." https://www.adjoint.io/

What are you getting at? There's a pretty big difference between corporate treasury software and cryptocurrency scams? Unless you're trying to argue that anything related to finance is a scam? I don't see what point you're trying to make, it seems such an irrelevant comment that it makes me question your motive and wonder if you're trying to smear Stephen.

What is bitcoin if not a distributed ledger?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#197

Post by WJW »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #152
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…

> C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Let's definitely stop using C in weapons control systems.

I think it's mostly Ada anyway.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#198

Post by everfree »

xg15 wrote: post #146

I find it rather telling that almost none of the crypto advocates in this thread make any argument that cryptocurrencies are not shady. Instead, the counterarguments brought forward are essentially: - "it's not the tool's fault that it's used for shady stuff" - "so what, other people are scammers, too!" - "there are so many warnings against cryptocurrencies, it's getting boring" - "yes, crypto has scams, but maybe so…

To be fair, many of those counterarguments would be seen as valid if we were discussing, say, private messengers instead of cryptocurrency:

* It's not Signal Messenger's fault that it's used for shady stuff.

* There are so many warnings against unbreakable strong encryption, it's getting boring.

* Many people are biased against strong encryption

In the end, like private messaging, cryptocurrency is just a tool that can be used for good or evil. I don't think that the general concept needs to be "defended as not being shady" any more than any other technology that enables scams, e.g. phones, youtube[1], the internet.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/23/21335554/steve-wozniak-yo...

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#199

Post by fennecfoxen »

mcguire wrote: post #189
nine_k wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Werner von Braun bombed London with V-2s during WWII and was a Nazi party member above the rank-and-file level. Werner von Braun has lead the US space program to launching humans to LEO, and then to the Moon. Again, technology is morally oblivious. A sword that only serves a noble aim is strictly the stuff of fairy tales, and is not implementable in the real world (no, not even with an AGI, since humans are a reasona…

SS-Sturmbannführer. About the same as a Major. Yes, in the SS. I may be the only one who giggles when driving past the Werner von Braun Center on Redstone Arsenal. It a very attractive, very new part of Army Missile Command.

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department”, says Wernher Von Braun. https://youtu.be/TjDEsGZLbio

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#200

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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