Invisible wrote:

> While it's a reasonable theory, I don't think you can have competition 
> between half a dozen semi-broken packages.
> 
> I mean, look at web browsers. There's IE, there's Safari, Firebox, 
> Opera, etc. But imagine if there was one browser which could do HTTP and 
> FTP, but didn't understand HTML. And another browser that understands 
> HTML and CSS, but only handles HTTP and not FTP. Now imagine another 
> browser that handles HTTP and HTML, but doesn't support forms, but does 
> support Java... Would they "compete"? Or would everybody just concluse 
> that this whole web dealy isn't worth the effort?
> 
>> No problem compartmentalizing libraries. But, you really don't need 
>> two libraries that do A, and three that do C, etc ...
> 
> See above.
> 

Oh, so it's much worse that I thought.

>> 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 ...)
> 
> Well... Haskell is slightly unusual in that it prefers data structures 
> to be immutable. Hence it offers immutable arrays. No other language 
> does. Look at BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, Tcl, etc., and 
> arrays are always mutable. Only in Haskell does such an animal as an 
> immutable array exist.
> 
> The Haskell data structure of choice is a list or a tree, because these 
> can be recursively defined. Arrays are not recursive, but it is possible 
> in various ways to pretend that they are. Similarly, immutable arrays 
> aren't particularly useful, but there are various ways to make mutable 
> arrays look immutable while retaining efficiency.
> 
> So, to summarise, arrays are slightly tricky in Haskell. There are 
> design choices to be made, and the optimal choice varies depending on 
> what you want to do. By contrast, C arrays are "just arrays".
> 

I see. So, essentially Haskell prefers to deal with data structures, 
rather than flat arrays?

> 
> Either that, or I come across as sounding like an idiot so people ignore 
> the content of what I'm saying.
> 
> Don and friends all seem like highly intelligent people. Maybe they just 
> have other priorities or something, IDK.
> 

Who knows...

>> That's just the sort of thing that will cause a project to stagnate 
>> and die.
> 
> Er, yeah.
> 
> But hey, it's already begun. Every day, mainstream programming languages 
> continue to steal Haskell's inovative ideas. Maybe someday soon Haskell 
> truly will wither and die. :-(

Yep, and I believe I use a few of Haskell's stolen features every day. 
I've learned to really appreciate C#'s lambda expressions :)

-- 
~Mike

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