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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

301–310 of 341 posts

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#301
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…

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#302
post #222
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 b…

I didn't see anyone discussions banning crypto users from Haskell - it's certainly not in the original article. The point was about which actors have the most influence on the community. Apparently the author is also very concerned about companies like Facebook which you might call more respectable.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#303
post #73
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.

From my view, its less about using the technology for side projects, and more about job prospects using that language. If Haskell jobs are overwhelmingly associated with crypto, and that’s a negative association for most people, they might be less likely to invest time into learning Haskell, as they’re not interested in joining the crypto industry.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#304
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

tweag is funding Asterius.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#305
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way that whole affair is reported infuriates me. HSBC followed unclear government guidance and advised their clients to do the things that the government said were low risk. That article talks about "money laundering crimes" but nothing HSBC did was ever shown to be criminal, nor should it have been. They moved money in a legal way for their clients, but people would rather blame bankers than drug dealers.

> nothing HSBC did was ever shown to be criminal HSBC has a sordid history of associating with criminal or unethical behavior, including active participation in money-laundering - far from "moved money in a legal way". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Controversies

When I drilled down into the details it looked like the accusations were all just smoke. It's things like "the law said that transactions from this region should be classified as medium risk or low risk depending on the bank's own judgement, and the bank decided to classify them as low risk", or "the bank provided services to company x, which was found out to be part of a criminal enterprise 10 years later". The only "active participation in money laundering" was that a client company asked them how to send wire transfers from Mexico to the US without violating the regulations, and they told them, which far from being a crime is surely what any responsible company would do.

If you've got concrete facts to the contrary then I'd be happy to be corrected, but I'm convinced it's all just political posturing.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Author does not mention energy usage at all. Main problem is that he thinks that crypto is a scam where a lot of people are being tricked. Would you like your language development to be funded by drug cartels or from blood diamonds profits?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#307
post #156
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. This is a call to the Haskell developer community to stop cooperation with crypto projects, not a general call to stop using Haskell. I.e., it's a call to the knife makers to stop making their knifes to the specs of mob bosses, not a call to ban knifes. There are plenty of precedents for this kind of action, e.g. pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply chemicals for executions. (If were already going all li…

This sounds quite reasonable! But if all a knife needs is a sharp blade, there's little to be done in the way of limiting its specific uses. Also, do cryptocurrency bosses ask the community to shape Haskell in the way suitable for them, e.g. in the core libraries or extensions? Or do they just produce libraries for their own use?

Its more like, would you enjoy your weekend foodball game if you knew that stadium was build by slaves. Theres nothing bad in stadium it self, but the circumstances how it came to be are not acceptable for you.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#308
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…

There are also a lot of traditional finance companies using Haskell[1]

This list is misleading. Sure, there are probably a few people at any of these companies dabbling with Haskell. But the only major financial company where it is mainstream is StanChart.

Also, FTA, Isle of Man, not Mann. How seriously can we take a rant about a place that doesn’t even know how to spell it (source: am in Wales, that Isle is just off our coast).

Fun fact: when Scots say “och aye the noo”, noo is the Manx word for “saint”. English people think noo is “news”. It gives a totally different meaning.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#310
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll believe this when somebody buys a house with Bitcoin. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/16/bitcoin-is-finally-buying-in... "Our buyer has evolved, they've moved from mom and pops to young people who want to pay with various forms of payment," said Ben Shaoul, president of Magnum Real Estate Group. "Cryptocurrency is something that has been asked of us — 'Can you take cryptocurrency? Can we pay that way?' — and of c…

Spoiler alert: no one bought a house with Bitcoin. A real estate agent advertised a willingness to buy Bitcoin from his customer to facilitate a transaction.

From the same article I linked:

Others, however, are not as comfortable with the relatively new currency. The first ever single-family home sale in Texas involving bitcoin was announced last month. The buyer, who works in the tech industry, purchased the newly built home in Austin using bitcoin, but the seller, a custom homebuilder, wanted the currency converted to dollars during the transaction.

This article is from 2017 I'm sure if I searched for more I'd find more examples but regardless is buying a house really the final test of something's potential as a currency?

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