Haskell Foundation 2026 Update • Hacker News Board

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#21

Post by isatty » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:54 AM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #8

Developer exercise is still lacking in Haskell ecosystem. Slow build times, deployment to Linux when developing on macos still pain. Deployment is pain specially on commodity VPS. Go is very easy to cross compile and deploy. But Haskell is better for a few things, but I've hardtime deploying it

You can use the GHC musl container: benz0li/ghc-musl:9.8.4 to create static binaries. I've specialized that into -arm64 and -amd64 containers for forgejo actions.

Anytime I push to my Haskell repos my actions automatically create static binaries for installation on my nodes.

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#22

Post by holowoodman » Thu, May 21, 2026, 7:58 AM UTC

the-grump wrote: post #11

pianopatrick wrote: post #9

The thought crosses my mind that Haskell may be uniquely suited for AI coding using a very small context window (cheap). Haskell encourages small functions and no global state. So you may be able to capture all the relevant context for editing a Haskell function within a few hundred or few thousand tokens. That would be better than some other languages. Plus the strong typing could help AI agents catch errors. I have…

As someone who loves Haskell more than any other language, some challenges are - the tooling is decades behind, say, Rust or Go - finding the right library in looks very different in Haskell--you frequently start with the signature on Hoogle. Agents can learn this but it's not the same as "web search" - creating the right solution also looks different. It's usually borne out of thinking about the types and coming up…

> - the tooling is decades behind, say, Rust or Go

No way. Where vibe-coded Rust contains tons of "unsafe", you can have your vibe-coded Haskell sprinkled with "unsafePerformIO" and "unsafeCoerce" ;)

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#23

Post by internet_points » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:10 AM UTC

pianopatrick wrote: post #9

The thought crosses my mind that Haskell may be uniquely suited for AI coding using a very small context window (cheap). Haskell encourages small functions and no global state. So you may be able to capture all the relevant context for editing a Haskell function within a few hundred or few thousand tokens. That would be better than some other languages. Plus the strong typing could help AI agents catch errors. I have…

There are lots of people successfully using agents with Haskell, for example

* https://github.com/digitallyinduced/ihp/ is mainly written with Claude now

* https://jappie.me/haskell-vibes.html is gushing over agent-written Haskell

* https://discourse.haskell.org/t/anti-llm-sentiment-considere... huge thread about the divisiveness of LLM's from some person who loves using them with Haskell

I can see how agent coding is a nice fit for Haskell, since LLM's tend to be best at tasks where you can easily verify the output – and GHC lets you easily verify much more of your domain than say Python (sure you can test some of what dynamic typing doesn't catch, but LLM-written tests do not always do what you think they should[0]). At the same time, the LLMs tend to not code golf unless asked to, and they don't care if they have to wait for dependencies to compile, so that takes away the two major Haskell time sinks.

[0] https://haskellforall.com/2026/05/type-out-the-code#:~:text=...

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#24

Post by internet_points » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:17 AM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #8

Developer exercise is still lacking in Haskell ecosystem. Slow build times, deployment to Linux when developing on macos still pain. Deployment is pain specially on commodity VPS. Go is very easy to cross compile and deploy. But Haskell is better for a few things, but I've hardtime deploying it

Cross compilation could definitely be easier :-/ I tend to just use github actions and compile from whatever architecture it should run on, so that's a workaround. I long for a day when I can just `cabal build --platform=amd64` etc. and it Just Works without having to download and compile a horde of foreign libs or set up a vm

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#25

Post by lmm » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:30 AM UTC

holowoodman wrote: post #22

the-grump wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who loves Haskell more than any other language, some challenges are - the tooling is decades behind, say, Rust or Go - finding the right library in looks very different in Haskell--you frequently start with the signature on Hoogle. Agents can learn this but it's not the same as "web search" - creating the right solution also looks different. It's usually borne out of thinking about the types and coming up…

> - the tooling is decades behind, say, Rust or Go No way. Where vibe-coded Rust contains tons of "unsafe", you can have your vibe-coded Haskell sprinkled with "unsafePerformIO" and "unsafeCoerce" ;)

accursedUnutterablePerformIO or bust :)

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#26

Post by shevy-java » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:36 AM UTC

I found Haskell too difficult. They focus on a specific niche, so they won't be a mainstay programming language anyway, but even then when you ask people what are the real innovations or success stories per given year, say, 2025 or 2026, they almost never mention Haskell.

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#27

Post by shideneyu » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:38 AM UTC

thecloudlet wrote: post #5

Really like this language. I would love more if we can make developing production code easier.

I like it too. It's underrated because the learning curve is very high

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#28

Post by shideneyu » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:43 AM UTC

isatty wrote: post #19

pianopatrick wrote: post #9

The thought crosses my mind that Haskell may be uniquely suited for AI coding using a very small context window (cheap). Haskell encourages small functions and no global state. So you may be able to capture all the relevant context for editing a Haskell function within a few hundred or few thousand tokens. That would be better than some other languages. Plus the strong typing could help AI agents catch errors. I have…

As an intermediate Haskell programmer, I’ve found that using AI to debug or learn Haskell is a better use of time than generating a lot of code with it. Even without AI most of my Haskell time is spent thinking. Also, I hand writing Haskell is one of my small after work pleasures.

Much agreed

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#29

Post by niek_pas » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #26

I found Haskell too difficult. They focus on a specific niche, so they won't be a mainstay programming language anyway, but even then when you ask people what are the real innovations or success stories per given year, say, 2025 or 2026, they almost never mention Haskell.

I don't mean to sound elitist, but in a way, Haskell's difficulty is kind of the point of the language.

The thing that's so elegant about Haskell is that it allows you to express programmatic constructs at a very abstract level. Abstraction is almost by definition difficult to grasp. That's why it takes a decade and a half for (most) people to go from arithmetic to calculus.

Re: Haskell Foundation 2026 Update

#30

Post by KnuthIsGod » Thu, May 21, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

"The principal goal is to dedicate most of the Foundation’s financial resources to technical work.....

To make this possible, the Haskell Foundation will remain without an executive director for the foreseeable future.

Instead of having a full-time employee in charge of fundraising, events, coordination, mediation and much more, we will split these responsibilities between the Board and a new, part-time role dedicated to the Haskell Foundation’s financial sustainability."

Sounds a great move in principle.