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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#221

Post by p0llard »

exdsq wrote: post #192
p0llard wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> He's working on the same ledger tech but centralised

Cryptographic ledger technology has been around since forever (the 70s to be precise): just look at Git, SUNDR, etc.

I believe he's specifically calling out firms working on cryptocurrencies; cryptocurrencies are just one application of cryptographic distributed ledgers.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#222

Post by dpc_pw »

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…

"Crypto community" is not a unified group of people, holding hands and singing "kumbaya", you know?

Quite the opposite - fights and accusing almost all competing projects of technical and/or moral failures are a bread and butter of crypto.

It's safe to say that most people in crypto space admits that the space is somewhat shady. How else could it be? Money are involved so it attracts people trying to exploit it and brings the worst side of many, otherwise decent participants, and anyone can create yet another crypto project and there's nothing to stop them. And it's always "your word and opinion against mine" kind of thing.

BTW. It's funny how many people on HN, have no problem with "regular" SV companies often based on: praying on dark marketing patterns, human dopamine addiction, data collection, overly optimistic return projections and so many other "sins", but are quick to discredit "crypto" as a whole, to the point where they would ban it from using their favorite programming languages. :D

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#223

Post by CyberDildonics »

NateEag wrote: post #148
CyberDildonics wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics is not something that can be tested easily on a large scale, so most of it becomes about trying to explain why things happened in retrospect.

Which can be restated as "Economic theories, on average, have little predictive power." I'm glad I took econ classes, but it is not a very practical discipline. And, yes, I think it's a stretch to call it a science when you can't do meaningful experiments. I object to calling geology a science for the same reason.

I would probably agree, but saying something is difficult to test is not the same as saying that many theories don't seem to be true in practice.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#224

Post by heinrich5991 »

jhayward wrote: post #218
callamdelaney wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people.` any citation for this?

"The first fully functioning electronic digital computer to be built in the U.S. was ENIAC, constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, for the Army Ordnance Department, by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. Completed in 1945, ENIAC was somewhat similar to the earlier Colossus, but considerably larger and more flexible (although far from general-purpose). The primary functi…

> to be built in the U.S.

What about the global situation? Is it the same?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#225

Post by exdsq »

p0llard wrote: post #221
exdsq wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> He's working on the same ledger tech but centralised Cryptographic ledger technology has been around since forever (the 70s to be precise): just look at Git, SUNDR, etc. I believe he's specifically calling out firms working on cryptocurrencies ; cryptocurrencies are just one application of cryptographic distributed ledgers.

Sure, but the companies he specifically named are working on similar projects that's all.

Edit: In fact I don't know of a single company using Haskell in the crypto space I'd define as a 'scam'

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#226

Post by CyberDildonics »

pwm wrote: post #220
CyberDildonics wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically a DAG - directed acyclical graph. Data is transformed from inputs to outputs with no state or branching on the macro level of the transform. Lots of programs have parts that map to this very well. The cracks show when someone realizes this and thinks it is a silver bullet to build an architecture that ONLY does this. Then the parts that inevitably do need branching, state, and complex loops become a…

Hm, what's the issue with state and branching?

If you build a language that is based around doing everything with stateless data transformations but doesn't address state and branching, it will eventually be a problem, because the reality is that the vast majority of non trivial software needs to deal with plenty of state and branching, not to mention the state and branching that will go in to managing resources.

There are a lot of domain specific tools that are used for specific tasks where the main software is taking care of architecture, high level decisions and resources. Shaders are one example of this. Trying to write non trivial software like this is problematic because the structure you are using is so disconnected from what the software needs to do.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#227

Post by kbenson »

shpongled wrote: post #158
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 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…

> "What exactly is the point of all of your long codes of conduct and community guidelines if the primary use for your language is the creation of a nightmare surveillance state?"

That is a weird point of view, but unfortunately not all that uncommon (when applied as a general worldview) right now. I think it's worth noting that it's generally anti-open source and free software, as it generally boils down to "you should control this thing you created as a group" as opposed to "we all created this and anyone can use it for anything, but maybe we require you to share changes so it's self perpetuating".

In my personal opinion, it's the worst type of small community social pressure taken to unhealthy extremes brought wholesale to the internet age. That is, poorly rationalized, aimed people that associate with the target rather than the target, and in this case "associate" is so tenuous as include the people that made a better hammer because someone used it to build something objectionable.

When I find this I find myself wondering if these people even really believe this, or they just express this as a strategy to influence people? I don't know enough about Dielh to know what I think is more likely.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#228

Post by granitepail »

p0llard wrote: post #216
leotaku wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

They aren't really targeting similar markets (at least from my perspective): pretty much any multinational firm can benefit from better corporate treasury management; cryptocurrencies are just one application of this technology, and Stephen is calling out specifically those which are attempting to defraud (or at least benefit from the the gross ignorance of) retail investors. Those seem like entirely different market…

Exactly. A cryptocurrency is driven by speculation. A treasury system helps manage flows of capital in and out of a business. Said company pays to use the proprietary system. Sure, they're both backed by a ledger, but Adjoint isn't turning profit by encouraging or even allowing people to speculate on the future value of their platform. They're selling a service.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#229

Post by gwbas1c »

This is one of the best "We're not thinking critically about cryptocurrency" articles I've read.

What's more surprising is it didn't get flagged to death. Maybe because the title isn't attracting attention?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#230

Post by centimeter »

Lazy and poorly-considered article. It conflates Bitcoiners with shitcoin grifters like Cardano. It's also beyond stupid to purity-police the uses of a programming language. There's no collective tradeoff we have to make here. It doesn't cost me anything as a Haskell dev if someone is using it in some scam somewhere.
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