Invisible wrote:

>> Sounds like they drank the OSS flavored kool-aid.
> 
> I have no idea what the heck kool-aid is, but... yes.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drank_the_kool-aid it's interesting, 
and gives the source for the expression.

> Don's position was that "the perfect container API hasn't been invented 
> yet" and that we need to "experiment" and that these multiple different 
> array libraries would "compete" for users and the best one would win. Or 
> something like that.

Interesting assertion ... I don't know what to say.

>  From where I'm sitting, we've got a library that does A, B and C, 
> another one that does A, D and E, another that does C, D and F, and yet 
> another that does X, Y and B. And I'd really like to just have a single 
> library that does A through Z easily and without fuss. :-P

No problem compartmentalizing libraries. But, you really don't need two 
libraries that do A, and three that do C, etc ...

> IMHO, "competition" only works if people actually have the time and 
> inclination to try out all the alternatives and pick the one they like 
> the best. That probably works for parser libraries. (Indeed, Haskell has 
> at least two major ones - Parsec and PolyParse.) I'm not sure it works 
> well for a bunch of array libraries when none of them covers more than a 
> few use cases.

How many libraries does it take to deal with such an elementary concept 
as an array? (I assume we're talking about what is essentially a vector, 
a list of values, no particular data structures like hash tables, linked 
lists and the sort ...)

> But hey, it's only my opinion. And I suck at Haskell, remember? :-S

Yeah, right .. Sounds like the Haskell community is dominated by a bunch 
of egos that have closed themselves off from any outside ideas and 
believe that what they think is right, and no one else is.

That's just the sort of thing that will cause a project to stagnate and 
die.

-- 
~Mike

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