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Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

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Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#21

Post by szany »

debacle wrote: post #18
thu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I see someone seriously dismiss, and choose, a programming language based solely on its syntax. Also the first time I see one to pretend Haskell makes it more difficult to express oneself because of the syntax. Surely, you were talking about the comments syntax. They really make it horrible to express anything.

I choose every language I use based on the expressiveness of the syntax. What other reason is there to choose a language?

Semantics.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#22

Post by Amadiro »

jlouis wrote: post #6
debacle wrote: post #4

I don't mean to be cruel, but Haskell is simply not a good language for 2012. It feels like I'm programming for 1983, with the poor syntax and silly idioms. There's a reason that eight out of the ten top programming languages in use today are C or C descendants - C is a great language to read and write, and for 90% of programming tasks (and 99.9% of business programming tasks), how easy it is for the programmer to co…

C and C descendants happen to be the primary reason we have not really moved forward any further than where we are right now. To build a mildly succesful C application, you needs lots and lots of code. The question is: Does it necessarily have to be so? Haskell as a language is far more advanced and your "feel" might actually be right: You are now programming in the 80'es rather than the 70'es which most C-descendant…

You need to write lots and lots of code to write a successful application in any language, really...

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#23

Post by TheBoff »

debacle wrote: post #10
groovy2shoes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of hand-waving here. Do you realize that C syntax predates 1983? Can you explain what it is about Haskell syntax that irks you? Can you provide examples of silly idioms?

The C syntax predates 1983, but it works. Haskell's operators are wonk: [0,1,2,3]!!2 versus: [0,1,2,3][2] Clearly !! is a logical array indexing operator.

Can you explain what you dislike about it? It's a different operator, certainly.

I'm pretty sure that it has an "odd" shape, because indexing a list in Haskell is potentially O(n). The operator itself is essentially a warning...

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#24

Post by pnathan »

thu wrote: post #13
debacle wrote: post #4

I don't mean to be cruel, but Haskell is simply not a good language for 2012. It feels like I'm programming for 1983, with the poor syntax and silly idioms. There's a reason that eight out of the ten top programming languages in use today are C or C descendants - C is a great language to read and write, and for 90% of programming tasks (and 99.9% of business programming tasks), how easy it is for the programmer to co…

This is the first time I see someone seriously dismiss, and choose, a programming language based solely on its syntax. Also the first time I see one to pretend Haskell makes it more difficult to express oneself because of the syntax. Surely, you were talking about the comments syntax. They really make it horrible to express anything.

> This is the first time I see someone seriously dismiss, and choose, a programming language based solely on its syntax.

You've never read a Lisp thread with non-Lispers, have you? :-) The amount of whining about parentheses is incredible.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#25

Post by debacle »

szany wrote: post #21
debacle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I choose every language I use based on the expressiveness of the syntax. What other reason is there to choose a language?

Semantics.

Why choose a language with good semantics if the syntax is awful?

Most languages today offer the same semantics - first class functions, objects, namespacing. Apart from that core, there isn't really a huge variance except for fringe languages that, generally, have severe syntactical limitations as a result.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#26

Post by thu »

debacle wrote: post #18
thu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I see someone seriously dismiss, and choose, a programming language based solely on its syntax. Also the first time I see one to pretend Haskell makes it more difficult to express oneself because of the syntax. Surely, you were talking about the comments syntax. They really make it horrible to express anything.

I choose every language I use based on the expressiveness of the syntax. What other reason is there to choose a language?

Usually, expressivity in a programming language is not really a matter of syntactic constructs but a matter of semantic constructs. But choosing a programming language involves much more than semantic (or syntax). Depending on the situation, community, compilers and tools, libraries, consultancy houses, documentation and books, are all reasons to choose or not a language.

Some even says that the number of programmers available on the market for a language is important. I don't think it is a good reason but a related one is: your existing user base is composed of companies and consultancies with their own programmers; you can't abruptly choose a different programming language than the one they know.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#27

Post by debacle »

pnathan wrote: post #24
thu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I see someone seriously dismiss, and choose, a programming language based solely on its syntax. Also the first time I see one to pretend Haskell makes it more difficult to express oneself because of the syntax. Surely, you were talking about the comments syntax. They really make it horrible to express anything.

> This is the first time I see someone seriously dismiss, and choose, a programming language based solely on its syntax. You've never read a Lisp thread with non-Lispers, have you? :-) The amount of whining about parentheses is incredible .

To be fair, as a non-Lisper that knows Lisp, it's all about the libraries and the language-as-a-platform.

If WordPress was written in Lisp, I'm sure many more people would use it. It's sort of a chicken and egg problem, I guess.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#28

Post by debacle »

thu wrote: post #26
debacle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I choose every language I use based on the expressiveness of the syntax. What other reason is there to choose a language?

Usually, expressivity in a programming language is not really a matter of syntactic constructs but a matter of semantic constructs. But choosing a programming language involves much more than semantic (or syntax). Depending on the situation, community, compilers and tools, libraries, consultancy houses, documentation and books, are all reasons to choose or not a language. Some even says that the number of programmers…

I would disagree. Semantically, we're reaching a point where most popular languages have a similar feature set (semantically speaking), and as new semantic constructs are created, they're quickly ported to other languages.

I agree with you about the 'platform' of a language, though. That's one of those things that you can't get away from.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#29

Post by groovy2shoes »

debacle wrote: post #19
eru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can define your own operator, if you want to. There are legitimate gripes you can have about Haskell syntax, but this is just trolling.

Calling someone a troll because they disagree with you is pretty offensive. And I don't want to define my own operator. I can define my own words in English as well, but I'd rather use the same words everyone else is using so it will be easier to communicate with them. If Haskell were as great of a language as you say, it would be more popular.

What you're saying is that you don't like Haskell's syntax because it's not C's syntax. The unfamiliarity card is not a legitimate card in the game of criticism.

> I'd rather use the same words everyone else is using so it will be easier to communicate with them.

Would you be happier if C was the only language, and everyone just had to use C?

> If Haskell were as great of a language as you say, it would be more popular.

This is completely non sequitur. Popularity has little to do with the advantages offered by a language. At one time, C was not so popular.

Re: Why is Haskell used so little in the industry?

#30

Post by debacle »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #29
debacle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling someone a troll because they disagree with you is pretty offensive. And I don't want to define my own operator. I can define my own words in English as well, but I'd rather use the same words everyone else is using so it will be easier to communicate with them. If Haskell were as great of a language as you say, it would be more popular.

What you're saying is that you don't like Haskell's syntax because it's not C's syntax. The unfamiliarity card is not a legitimate card in the game of criticism. > I'd rather use the same words everyone else is using so it will be easier to communicate with them. Would you be happier if C was the only language, and everyone just had to use C? > If Haskell were as great of a language as you say, it would be more popul…

What I'm saying is that C is ubiquitous because it has strong syntax, and Haskell is not because it doesn't.

I like C's syntax, but I also like Lisp's and Scala's and SQL's.

> Would you be happier if C was the only language, and everyone just had to use C?

If C were as powerful as a modern programming language (JavaScript) and had the standardization of a libraries that Perl or PHP has, then I'd be okay with writing C. The only reason I don't is because C has been improved upon. Haskell is a step back.

> This is completely non sequitur.

Of course it isn't. Popularity has a huge amount to do with the advantages offered by a language. If a language was crap, no one would use it.

At one time, C was not very popular, but in the last 20 years almost all of the most popular languages, year after year, have been C or its descendants.

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