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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#271

Post by louwrentius »

spopejoy wrote: post #270
c3534l wrote: post #246

Cryptocurrency enables people to make anonymous monetary transactions. Also, so does cash. Drug dealers and criminals still very much prefer cash. Is it wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their association with cash? Should we be worried about users associating your favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions which subvert the traditional role and spying capacity of la…

It's worth noting that the author's company is in the private blockchain field, complete with a smart contract language under their belt, in Haskell. Indeed, it's not the first time that a private blockchain partisan has attempted to tar all of "public" blockchain/crypto as a lawless amoral cesspool. R3 made similar claims in years past. In truth, there's been equal or more FUD thrown at private by public zealots too…

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains still don't seem to solve a real problem.

It seems like a solution for nothing.

I think cryptocurrencies are detrimental to society and I don't care if you program them in Haskel or brainfuck.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#272

Post by unityByFreedom »

smcl wrote: post #263
c3534l wrote: post #246

Cryptocurrency enables people to make anonymous monetary transactions. Also, so does cash. Drug dealers and criminals still very much prefer cash. Is it wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their association with cash? Should we be worried about users associating your favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions which subvert the traditional role and spying capacity of la…

Hold on. The idea that a means of exchange can be used to purchase seedy or illegal goods is not the problem the author has with cryptocurrencies. The issue is VERY clearly stated - there's a loosely-regulated industry riddled with companies that are pushing essentially scam investments. The author is concerned that these companies are beginning to fund enough Haskell development that it's worth questioning whether t…

Exactly. Nobody is saying "get your cash here!" while profiting off of speculators. Ok, maybe countries do but they also back the currency and foster growth. You get no such protection from crypto communities.

Everything in the OP article is spot on and the gp argument is a strawman.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#273

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

anaphor wrote: post #31

There are also a lot of traditional finance companies using Haskell[1]. And, historically some of the people who created the language itself and have worked on GHC (and other compilers), or contributed heavily to the ecosystem have worked for traditional banks[2]. I don't mention them to encourage people to attack these people, but it comes off as a bit selective to focus on the people using your language for cryptoc…

My rough understanding is that the focus is not on who is using the language, but rather who is funding the language, which of course is a huge distinction.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#274

Post by yw3410 »

dgellow wrote: post #73
LargeWu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's not talking about the technical features of blockchain. He's talking about the general shadiness of a nontrivial number of actors in the cryptocurrency sector itself, which have had a propensity for deceptive marketing, and even outright fraud. His concern is that if Haskell gets the reputation of being beholden to these interests it will make the Haskell ecosystem undesirable to legitimate actors.

But... who actually thinks this way when they select technologies? If Go was used for a lot of crypto scam, I wouldn’t spend a second thinking about it when I’m deciding to use it for my non-scam, non-crypto’s project. I have difficulty to understand how it is an issue that a programming language is used for a niche that has bad reputation.

The collapse of AI research in the 1980's directly caused a decline in Lisp research.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#275

Post by anaphor »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #273
anaphor wrote: post #31

There are also a lot of traditional finance companies using Haskell[1]. And, historically some of the people who created the language itself and have worked on GHC (and other compilers), or contributed heavily to the ecosystem have worked for traditional banks[2]. I don't mention them to encourage people to attack these people, but it comes off as a bit selective to focus on the people using your language for cryptoc…

My rough understanding is that the focus is not on who is using the language, but rather who is funding the language, which of course is a huge distinction.

But banks (particularly Standard Chartered as an example) seem to have also funded a lot of the really early work on Haskell if I'm not mistaken. At least indirectly by hiring people who also work on the core tooling/libraries/etc. Haskell, and functional programming in general has a history of being used and developed heavily in the fintech industry (see Jane Street for OCaml as another example). It's no surprise that cryptocurrency startups would find it attractive and continue that trend. So it really boils down to how ethical you think one group is vs the other, which I think is a ridiculous argument to have. If a specific company or group is doing something unethical/illegal, then name and shame them, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#276

Post by patrickthebold »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #264
c3534l wrote: post #246

Cryptocurrency enables people to make anonymous monetary transactions. Also, so does cash. Drug dealers and criminals still very much prefer cash. Is it wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their association with cash? Should we be worried about users associating your favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions which subvert the traditional role and spying capacity of la…

> worried about users associating your favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions when did we start calling cash transactions seedy? you own a pub, somebody pays in cash is automatically seedy? let's maybe look into offshore banking and US offshore jurisdictions such as New Mexico, Delaware and Nevada first (tax havens in our midst) before bringing out the guns on the little people who have a bad lin…

To be fair, if someone hands off a briefcase full of cash, that's generally considered shady.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#277

Post by scoopertrooper »

c3534l wrote: post #246

Cryptocurrency enables people to make anonymous monetary transactions. Also, so does cash. Drug dealers and criminals still very much prefer cash. Is it wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their association with cash? Should we be worried about users associating your favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions which subvert the traditional role and spying capacity of la…

> Is it wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their association with cash?

Cash is much more difficult to move across international borders. It opens up exciting new opportunities for international crime and scammers. Further, cash is not a fungible as you suggest, criminal have to incur vast expense in order launder their money. Cash is also difficult to store in large quantities, which imposes a physical constraint on the amount that can be securely stashed by less sophisticated criminals.

Cryptocurrencies have lead to an explosion of pump and dump schemes, ponzi schemes, outright fraud (see: the recent twitter hack), and other financial schemes design to separate the gullible from their money.

Did these things exist prior to Cryptocurrencies? Yes, but cryptocurrencies democratised the ability to conduct them and made it more difficult for authorities to catch criminals.

Cryptocurrencies are an absolutely terrible idea: born from the minds of techno-utopians, fueled by anarcho capitalists, and weaponised by criminals.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#278

Post by mightybyte »

louwrentius wrote: post #271
spopejoy wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the author's company is in the private blockchain field, complete with a smart contract language under their belt, in Haskell. Indeed, it's not the first time that a private blockchain partisan has attempted to tar all of "public" blockchain/crypto as a lawless amoral cesspool. R3 made similar claims in years past. In truth, there's been equal or more FUD thrown at private by public zealots too…

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains still don't seem to solve a real problem. It seems like a solution for nothing. I think cryptocurrencies are detrimental to society and I don't care if you program them in Haskel or brainfuck.

> Cryptocurrencies and blockchains still don't seem to solve a real problem.

Have you ever wanted to send money to someone who wasn't in the same location as you? Alternatively, have you ever wanted to send a large amount of money without dealing with a large volume of cash, gold, or some other physical store of value (making the down payment on a house or car for instance)? Blockchains make it possible for you to do that electronically, and without the enormous and centralized infrastructure of banks, vaults, guards, armored cars, etc.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#279

Post by sanxiyn »

exdsq wrote: post #172
sanxiyn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key word here is Asterius. Cardano is funding Asterius, Haskell to WebAssembly compiler, Asterius is based on GHC, and changes convenient for Asterius are being merged to GHC.

This isn't really true - several members of the team have been contributing to GHC since before Cardano was a thing.

There is no contradiction here. I didn't claim Cardano started Asterius. But it definitely is funding it.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#280

Post by shadowgovt »

mightybyte wrote: post #278
louwrentius wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains still don't seem to solve a real problem. It seems like a solution for nothing. I think cryptocurrencies are detrimental to society and I don't care if you program them in Haskel or brainfuck.

> Cryptocurrencies and blockchains still don't seem to solve a real problem. Have you ever wanted to send money to someone who wasn't in the same location as you? Alternatively, have you ever wanted to send a large amount of money without dealing with a large volume of cash, gold, or some other physical store of value (making the down payment on a house or car for instance)? Blockchains make it possible for you to do…

I'll believe this when somebody buys a house with Bitcoin.
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