Predictably, this blog post reads like a Haskell pamphlet and it hits all the Bingo marks: purity, no side effects, ah but yes side effects with the IO monads, monads, concurrency, the awesome community (seriously? Have they actually looked into it? The #haskell irc channel is moderated by Tony Morris, a lunatic who's been banned from many mailing-lists and channels because of several psychological disorders he suffers from), etc...
Even more predictably, not a single word on more pragmatic reasons to choose Haskell as a startup, such as: web and networking support, logging, database access, etc...
The odds of a startup succeeding are already vanishingly small, why make it even harder on yourself by picking an exotic language that's all but unknown in the work force?
"Haskell has no side effects" is true, but only in the sense that they are no longer side effects but simply "effects" as they are marked a such.
The idea isn't to get rid of effects but to quarantine them, separate them from simple functions into "procedures". This means you get to have real functions in Haskell, and they truly are easier to compose together than what other languages call "functions" but are actually procedures.
As for concurrency, Haskell is really in a unique spot, where you can get the performance of threads and the simplicity of processes: the immutability of everything not explicitly created for inter-thread communication gives you the same safety of IPC, but the shared memory gives you threads' performance.
I think the benefits outlined on the page may not be specific to web development, but they definitely apply to it too.
I haven't seen Tony Morris abuse anyone in the community, and the IRC channel is an amazing combination of immense knowledge and patience with newbies.
> I haven't seen Tony Morris abuse anyone in the community, and the IRC channel is an amazing combination of immense knowledge and patience with newbies.
Seriously? Here is the latest example on scala-debate, just two months ago, where he went so far off the deep end that Martin himself had to step in and tell him to cool down:
He dishes this kind of abuse on a regular basis on lists, irc (especially #scala) and sometimes even on his own Twitter feed.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand: yes, I know the theory behind immutability and isolation and how it can enable easier parallelism. I have yet to see practical examples of that in Haskell and convincing stats that show a boost in performance compared to more traditional approaches (such as Java+nio or even Scala actors).
My questions still hold regarding Haskell's adequacy in production, e.g. with regards to database, logging or continuous integration, and I'm not the only one: Alex Payne recently expressed the same concerns on SO:
Yes, but nothing like that is happening in #haskell. I've asked some really stupid questions there, sometimes more than once, and been treated well. The "worst" treatment I've received is an admonishment to read the Haskell site for a more trivial question.
There are 16 official moderators on the #haskell channel, as well. I apologize (as one of those moderators) if the OP has had a bad experience: with so many people in the channel, not everyone gets exactly what they need, however, we do try very very hard to be friendly.
Having never met Tony, but having read many of his posts and comments, I have to say that I can understand that people develop a severe dislike towards him. He's emphatically not a 'nice guy' online. He is expert at his stuff and that makes up for a lot, but he would have to have more respect for, and patience with, less knowledgeable folks to become 'a very good teacher'.
He is extremely condescending towards those that don't get it, especially when they don't display sufficient humility about their lack of knowledge. You have to go "I'm sure you're right, but I would think that you could do such-and-such" to avoid pissing him off. As soon as you say "I think that's wrong, because of this-and-that", then you run the risk to get shat all over with comments of the "you don't get it and you don't want to learn"-kind, even though you're engaging in conversation that wouldn't lead to a flamewar with most other people.
He is a decent teacher for those that can look past his purist rants and are sophisticated enough to ignore the antagonizing that's going on, but he could do much to disseminate his knowledge more effectively to a wider public, without losing anything of the value of his message. It's an awful waste :/.
PS: This is why I sometimes demonstrate low tolerance for stupidity and/or failure or refusal to entertain the possibility of thinking. People get hurt. No, I am not sorry.
(for context he is very good at squash and hurt himself while playing)
What happened to him is very unfortunate but see the kind of conclusion he draws from his ordeal:
"I have formed the opinion that medical specialists are no more equipped to make a medical diagnosis than lay-people."
You would think someone with a reasonable intellect would refrain from making such sweeping generalizations, especially when their own judgment has been clouded by negative empirical evidence.
It's a personal attack, but not actually an ad hominem attack. There is a difference between "McDonalds has a bad business model because their burgers are gross" and "McDonalds is unpleasant to eat at because their burgers are gross." The poster's attack is of the second form.
Still fallacious. To continue your analogy, this is like saying that all McDonald's stores have unpleasant food because of that one store. Yes, something should be done if it wasn't a one time thing, but no that does not mean the other stores necessarily have the issue(although they could).
Even more predictably, not a single word on more pragmatic reasons to choose Haskell as a startup, such as: web and networking support, logging, database access, etc...
The odds of a startup succeeding are already vanishingly small, why make it even harder on yourself by picking an exotic language that's all but unknown in the work force?
<shakes head>