[HN Gopher] Haskell is Useless (2011) [video]
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       Haskell is Useless (2011) [video]
        
       Author : behnamoh
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2024-02-18 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | seanparsons wrote:
       | Been posted a bunch of times in the past:
       | https://hn.algolia.com/?q=haskell+useless
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Looks like these are the only comments though, unless I missed
         | something?
         | 
         |  _Simon Peyton Jones - Haskell is useless [video]_ -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23957953 - July 2020 (1
         | comment)
         | 
         |  _Haskell People_ -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15371448 - Sept 2017 (97
         | comments)
        
       | refulgentis wrote:
       | I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from this. (beyond
       | the well-established Haskell-esque effects bad)
        
       | tromp wrote:
       | And of course, lambda calculus is even more useless.
       | 
       | But you can still make a nice universal machine that can run any
       | computable function from stdin to stdout, by parsing a lambda
       | term from the start of stdin, and applying it to the remainder
       | [1].
       | 
       | [1] https://www.ioccc.org/2012/tromp/hint.html
        
       | breadwinner wrote:
       | His comment is being taken out of context. He is talking about
       | Haskell before they figured out how to add effects. As he says
       | [1], a program without effects is useless, as it doesn't do
       | anything except make the computer hot. Then they figured out how
       | to combine -- in a single language -- effectful computations, and
       | effect-free ones, without making them pollute each other. The
       | type-system keeps them apart. This makes Haskell useful. So in
       | summary, he is not saying modern-day Haskell, with effects, is
       | useless.
       | 
       | [1] https://youtu.be/iSmkqocn0oQ?t=202
        
       | hiddencost wrote:
       | I took a Haskell course in grad school from someone who
       | contributed to Haskell.
       | 
       | They made the claim that the primary function (lol) of Haskell
       | was to discover new PL ideas which then got adopted by the major
       | languages.
        
         | golergka wrote:
         | Why not? That's primary function of many research entities of
         | various sorts in very different industries.
        
       | daxfohl wrote:
       | I still wonder why Haskell sans IO isn't a thing. Seems like it
       | would be a really great way to define/implement rules for a rules
       | engine that supported it. I guess you'd still have to worry about
       | OOM or CPU thrashing, but in general it seems like it would be a
       | very expressive language offering a secure sandbox and
       | guaranteeing functional purity for such tasks.
        
         | actionfromafar wrote:
         | At some point you would need to see the results of the rules
         | applied, thus, you'd need IO.
        
       | behnamoh wrote:
       | All--
       | 
       | I didn't editorialize the title. The original title I posted was
       | "Simon Peyton Jones -- Haskell is useless".
       | 
       | FYI: Simon is a major contributor to the design of the Haskell
       | programming language and a lead developer of the Glasgow Haskell
       | Compiler (GHC).
        
       | jasode wrote:
       | Fyi... The Youtube upload date is Dec 2011 but it was actually
       | recorded circa July 2007 and originally posted on Microsoft's
       | Channel9.
       | 
       | A previous discussion from 2007: http://lambda-the-
       | ultimate.org/node/2356
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-18 23:00 UTC)