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When Haskell Is Not faster than C

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Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#41

Post by VeejayRampay »

Peaker wrote: post #35
VeejayRampay wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of other languages and programming styles can provide the same benefits. It doesn't have to be Haskell against Python or C++ against Erlang. We can pick, mix and match and let the best of the bunch naturally emerge.

I don't think other languages have the same benefits of Haskell. They have other benefits but not Haskell's. Python/Ruby: very easy to learn and be productive quickly. C: high level of control over resources and easy to get good performance. Haskell: very good static guarantees about correctness. Relatively easy to get decent and good performance. Extremely educational and mind expanding, far more than say Lisp. Allo…

What about Objective Caml? Seems to fit the bill for all those metrics as well, yet for a reason that eludes me to this day, it never quite reached the kind of "street rep" that Haskell now enjoys.

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#42

Post by Peaker »

bborud wrote: post #21

If Haskell, Lisp and friends are so great for building large software systems then surely people are going to flock to them and do exactly that. And if that didn't happen, of course the proponents of these languages would sit down and try to figure out why this wasn't happening. Right?

Haskellers are aware of various downsides and disadvantages to using Haskell and are actively working to improve on those.

Also, the FP complete company was created to answer that exact question and cater to commercial companies who want to use Haskell. They provide training, and survey them to see what is holding them back from using Haskell, and providing them with solutions.

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#43

Post by [deleted] »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #36
jrockway wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say Haskell does one percent of the proselytising that Ruby does. You hear about it a lot on HN because people write interesting articles about it. Remember, most articles that are submitted aren't being upvoted. There's probably someone writing about how their ImmutableSet implementation for Java is the best thing ever, but it's not being upvoted because the community doesn't consider it interesting.

I am a Ruby programmer and let it be clear, the holier-than-thou attitude can indeed be pervasive in the Ruby community. Yet, most of the proselytism int the Ruby community are different shades of "Programming with this language makes me very happy, I'd like everyone to be happy as well". Of course it's not always as clear cut and there is sometimes much to be desired in terms of behavior. But that's where the Haskel…

[deleted]

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#44

Post by wereHamster »

bborud wrote: post #21

If Haskell, Lisp and friends are so great for building large software systems then surely people are going to flock to them and do exactly that. And if that didn't happen, of course the proponents of these languages would sit down and try to figure out why this wasn't happening. Right?

Education is a big part of the problem. When I attended university, we weren't even told that functional programming exists. Only later on, through one of my friends it was brought to my attention. And it's hard to change that mindset, particularly at the university I was. They are set to produce a constant stream of Java/.NET developers for the companies around them (large banks, in particular).

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#45

Post by looser »

simias wrote: post #8

This reminds me that when I was interested in learning haskell I was completely put off by their "introduction" page on their homepage. It was a couple of years ago but it doesn't seem to have changed much: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction It looks like a very pretentious sales pitch to me. You have quotes like "Writing large software systems that work is difficult and expensive. [...] Functional progr…

Probably the reason Haskell's introduction has more explanation is because for most, functional programming language is unusual.

Evaluating a language by just reading the introduction is like reading the introduction of a book and saying that you didn't like it. Read it! :)

It seems we are focusing too much in a possible weak point and forgeting about several strong points Haskell has.

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#46

Post by rtpg »

amirmc wrote: post #29
simias wrote: post #8

This reminds me that when I was interested in learning haskell I was completely put off by their "introduction" page on their homepage. It was a couple of years ago but it doesn't seem to have changed much: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction It looks like a very pretentious sales pitch to me. You have quotes like "Writing large software systems that work is difficult and expensive. [...] Functional progr…

Curious to know what you think of http://ocaml.org , specifically the code example on the front page and the further examples it links to ( http://ocaml.org/taste.html )

Funny, I've never seen that page, I always land on Inria's page(http://caml.inria.fr/).

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#47

Post by rtpg »

simias wrote: post #8

This reminds me that when I was interested in learning haskell I was completely put off by their "introduction" page on their homepage. It was a couple of years ago but it doesn't seem to have changed much: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction It looks like a very pretentious sales pitch to me. You have quotes like "Writing large software systems that work is difficult and expensive. [...] Functional progr…

Is there any language intro page that shows a good sized working program?

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#48

Post by jrockway »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #36
jrockway wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say Haskell does one percent of the proselytising that Ruby does. You hear about it a lot on HN because people write interesting articles about it. Remember, most articles that are submitted aren't being upvoted. There's probably someone writing about how their ImmutableSet implementation for Java is the best thing ever, but it's not being upvoted because the community doesn't consider it interesting.

I am a Ruby programmer and let it be clear, the holier-than-thou attitude can indeed be pervasive in the Ruby community. Yet, most of the proselytism int the Ruby community are different shades of "Programming with this language makes me very happy, I'd like everyone to be happy as well". Of course it's not always as clear cut and there is sometimes much to be desired in terms of behavior. But that's where the Haskel…

I think you're imagining the holier-than-thou attitude. While people are certainly excited to have figured it out, nobody is asking them to be excited about it.

If you disagree, how about citing some sources? You're good at coming up with analogies, but coming up with analogies is like being Hitler. What?

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#49

Post by sparkie »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #41
Peaker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think other languages have the same benefits of Haskell. They have other benefits but not Haskell's. Python/Ruby: very easy to learn and be productive quickly. C: high level of control over resources and easy to get good performance. Haskell: very good static guarantees about correctness. Relatively easy to get decent and good performance. Extremely educational and mind expanding, far more than say Lisp. Allo…

What about Objective Caml? Seems to fit the bill for all those metrics as well, yet for a reason that eludes me to this day, it never quite reached the kind of "street rep" that Haskell now enjoys.

OCaml isn't purely functional, so it misses some of the most important benefits of Haskell. It's also not entirely honest (in the fact that you can do things that the type system doesn't tell you about.)

Re: When Haskell Is Not faster than C

#50

Post by true_religion »

benbataille wrote: post #18
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to translate what you are saying. All languages are Turing complete, so it doesn't matter? Do you program in assembly language then? I mean, if it doesn't matter....

> All languages are Turing complete, so it doesn't matter? Precisely. The whole "my language is better" argument is completely void. Syntax is mostly a matter of preference. Semantic will make the structure of your program different but in the end there is no actual difference on what you can do only on how you will do it. Once again it mostly boils down to preference. If you really need to argue about something go f…

> Syntax is mostly a matter of preference.

While I halfways agree here, syntax follows semantics.

If a language gives you a syntatical sugar form of something that can only be expressed through many lines of code in another, then it makes a great deal of difference.

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