>> Implications seems pretty clear to me...
> 
> Oh right. After a few minutes, I realized what you were talking about. 
> If you came away with "RDBMs are never useful" from that discussion, 
> you're overgeneralizing what I'm saying again. :-)

Either ACID-compliance is a good thing, or it isn't. (I'm of the view 
that it is, but apparently I'm in the minority here...)

>> The Haskell mailing list is an unmoderated list.
>>
>> So... why is it that every time I post a message there, I get an 
>> autoreply saying "your post to Haskell has been held for moderation", 
>> and 80% of the time the post never appears at all?
> 
> Seems like it isn't unmoderated, then.

Or rather, only *my* posts are moderated. (Several people have at 
various times mentioned the lack of moderation, so I think it's only me.)

>> They make me sound like a curse or something. Jesus, am I really that 
>> hated??
> 
> No. Some people are just assholes. If you're really not trolling, Don's 
> an asshole. Trolls don't hang around 3 years arguing about stuff.

[Uh... this thread started, how exactly? How long as Mr Quad been 
hanging around here?]

I wouldn't mind, but I actually think Haskell is the coolest thing ever 
to exist, and I just want to help it take over the world. For my 
trouble, I get accused of being a troll. How did my message get this 
mutilated in transit??

-- 
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http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Warp seems to access the Internet only to tell me I've mis-spelt things. 
> 
>   It's "misspelt"! ;)

YOU ARE PEOPLE SEEING THIS?! >_<

>> OTOH, Warp is clearly a God-like programmer, and when He says something 
>> about programming, he's usually right. (Though not always.) Go ask him 
>> what the most efficient way to implement a Huffman tree in C++ is; I bet 
>> he knows.
> 
>   I'm not always right. Making yourself look smarter than you really are
> is an art.

You seem to be right far more often than me.

>   Of course when someone more knowledgeable about the subject calls your
> bluff, it can be really embarrassing. Admitting that you were wrong can
> be really difficult.

Yeah. And look at this: First you proved that my "efficient" program is 
actually 40x too slow, and I was forced to admit defeat. And then I 
asked about it on the Haskell list, but I made one stupid mistake: I 
retyped the code from memory, rather than copying it. And guess what? 
The example code I posted doesn't work properly. So now I've get a 
second bunch of people telling me how stupid I am.

I'm having such a great day. :-(

I really thought Haskell was the be-all and end-all of everything. Being 
forced to admit that it is not is really painful.

>   Haskell doesn't suck. The only problem I find with it is that it's not
> very approachable. It's hard to learn.

It works completely differently to normal languages. This has several 
consequences:

- It has a different set of strengths and weaknesses compared to normal 
languages. Some stuff that's usually hard becomes breathtakingly easy. 
And, yes, some stuff that's usually easy becomes somewhat harder too.

- You're not just learning a new syntax or a new set of scoping rules. 
It's a whole new game, which makes the learning curve kinda vertical. 
All the rules of the game are totally different, and while the rules are 
quite simple, this demands a totally new strategy. (Look at Go. The 
rules are pretty damned simple, eh? But the *game* is not!)

- The documentation... sucks. Truly. (Perhaps my saying this is why 
people think I'm a troll?)

>   It also seems that while Haskell can be used to create very efficient
> programs, it often happens that some properties of the language kick you
> in the groin when you try to do things in a simple way, resulting in a
> very inefficient program. You really need to know the inner workings of
> the language, the compiler and the libraries in order to be able to create
> the efficient implementation.

A few days ago, I'd have disagreed. I'd have said that you *can* write 
things simply and get good performance.

But today, we both know that's not actually true. Me, Mr Haskell Expert, 
wrote some code, and the performance was awful.

(I am reliably informed that "GHC does not currently fuse left folds". 
If that's true, that would explain one or two things... But all this 
really does is reinforce your point: you must memorise what the compiler 
does and does not optimise to get good code.)

>   (Of course the same is true for C++ and probably all languages. It's just
> that Haskell seems to be often advertised as "if it compiles, it works, and
> it's efficient", which doesn't seem true to me. You can often write clever
> one-liners which achieve things which would need dozens of lines in other
> languages, but that doesn't automatically mean the resulting program is
> efficient (or even correct).)

"If it compiles, it works correctly."

This is easily falsifiable. However, Haskell _does_ have the unusual 
property that, in the majority of real-world cases, if the type checker 
is happy, your program actually does what you wanted it to do. Few other 
languages have this property, and nobody is quite sure exactly why 
Haskell has it. (Though everybody has their theory.)

"If it works, it's efficient."

This is the ultimate goal, but we're not there yet.

A few days ago, I'd have said we're closing in fast. Now I'm really not 
so sure. Lots of people are very actively working on this; you don't 
often seem to hear about GCC getting some fancy new tool added to its 
box of tricks, but if you search around you can find all sorts of 
published papers about the sophisticated optimisation possibilities 
being added to GHC every year. After reading this stuff for a while, you 
end up with the impression that GHC is this super-powerful compiler that 
can make anything go fast.

The reality is rather more dissappointing.

I *still* believe that Haskell makes it possible to write programs that 
would just be too hard in any other language. (E.g., Parsec makes it 
really very easy to quickly throw a parser together. I've never managed 
to build a working nontrivial parser in any other language.) But maybe 
in a few days' time I'll have stopped believing that too...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Shouldn't that be ∈o∋ ?

<snicker>   Congratulations. I have never seen ASCII goatse before.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Either ACID-compliance is a good thing, or it isn't. (I'm of the view 
> that it is, but apparently I'm in the minority here...)

It's a good thing if you need it. It's an unnecessary burden if you don't. 
That's what I was trying to come away with.

Now, most people *do* need ACID, or they wouldn't be using a database in the 
first place. (Your text editor isn't ACID, is it?)  But there are 
increasingly more places that are willing to give up consistency in favor of 
scalability.

> Or rather, only *my* posts are moderated. (Several people have at 
> various times mentioned the lack of moderation, so I think it's only me.)

It's either moderated or it isn't. Now, maybe some peoples' posts are 
auto-approved, but they're still moderated. If it's an NNTP forum, you can 
tell by looking at the headers.

> [Uh... this thread started, how exactly? How long as Mr Quad been 
> hanging around here?]

Well, OK. But he doesn't troll about on-topic stuff, even in off-topic. :-)

> I wouldn't mind, but I actually think Haskell is the coolest thing ever 
> to exist, and I just want to help it take over the world. For my 
> trouble, I get accused of being a troll. How did my message get this 
> mutilated in transit??

Hard to say without seeing what you posted. What did you post?


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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>> Shouldn't that be ∈o∋ ?
> 
> <snicker>   Congratulations. I have never seen ASCII goatse before.

THAT'S my friggin' super-power? Drawing silly pictures in ASCII art?

I've reached a new low. :-(

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Either ACID-compliance is a good thing, or it isn't. (I'm of the view 
>> that it is, but apparently I'm in the minority here...)
> 
> It's a good thing if you need it. It's an unnecessary burden if you 
> don't. That's what I was trying to come away with.
> 
> Now, most people *do* need ACID, or they wouldn't be using a database in 
> the first place. (Your text editor isn't ACID, is it?)  But there are 
> increasingly more places that are willing to give up consistency in 
> favor of scalability.

See, I always thought that giving up on ACID was basically saying "yes, 
my data *will* get corrupted at some point", which would seem rather bad.

>> Or rather, only *my* posts are moderated. (Several people have at 
>> various times mentioned the lack of moderation, so I think it's only me.)
> 
> It's either moderated or it isn't. Now, maybe some peoples' posts are 
> auto-approved, but they're still moderated. If it's an NNTP forum, you 
> can tell by looking at the headers.

SMTP, unfortunately.

I did suggest it should be changed to NNTP, but I got flamed.

NNTP has the nice property that you can be as chatty as you damned well 
like, and if other people aren't interested, they can just ignore that 
thread. SMTP does not have this property.

>> [Uh... this thread started, how exactly? How long as Mr Quad been 
>> hanging around here?]
> 
> Well, OK. But he doesn't troll about on-topic stuff, even in off-topic. :-)

WTF *is* he on about, actually??

...wait, don't answer that.

>> I wouldn't mind, but I actually think Haskell is the coolest thing 
>> ever to exist, and I just want to help it take over the world. For my 
>> trouble, I get accused of being a troll. How did my message get this 
>> mutilated in transit??
> 
> Hard to say without seeing what you posted. What did you post?

Needless to say, I can't show you everything I've said in the last 3 
years. (My latest post was simply written too hurridly, and is ambiguous 
in ways which, in hindsight, are rather unfortunate.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>   I'm not always right. Making yourself look smarter than you really are
>> is an art.
> 
> You seem to be right far more often than me.

I think the point is that word "seem" in there. ;-)

> really does is reinforce your point: you must memorise what the compiler 
> does and does not optimise to get good code.)

That's true of all high-level languages. The difference between high-level 
and low-level languages is that high-level languages can improve efficiency 
by improving the compiler far more than low-level languages can.

> end up with the impression that GHC is this super-powerful compiler that 
> can make anything go fast.

Possibly because it started out so woefully slow?

> to build a working nontrivial parser in any other language.) But maybe 

Did you see the link I posted about writing a compiler for .NET? He goes 
thru the whole thing, from lexer to code generation, on one web page.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> See, I always thought that giving up on ACID was basically saying "yes, 
> my data *will* get corrupted at some point", which would seem rather bad.

Only if your data is vital. That's kind of the point I'm making. If your 
data is (for example) google's search cache, it doesn't matter if it's 
corrupted *temporarily*.  It doesn't matter if someone on the west coast 
sees the old version of your facebook page for 10 minutes after you change 
it on the east coast.

> NNTP has the nice property that you can be as chatty as you damned well 
> like, and if other people aren't interested, they can just ignore that 
> thread. SMTP does not have this property.

True.

> WTF *is* he on about, actually??
> ...wait, don't answer that.

I have known a number of people like that. It was always, quite literally, 
brain damage. Hence peoples' comments about taking his medications.

> Needless to say, I can't show you everything I've said in the last 3 
> years. (My latest post was simply written too hurridly, and is ambiguous 
> in ways which, in hindsight, are rather unfortunate.)

Take more care with the perfectionists who code Haskell compilers, then. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
>> Haskell doesn't suck.  It sucks a lot less than C++, certainly.  Being 
>> slower doesn't mean it sucks.  The higher-level the language and more 
>> away from the underlying low-level metal, the better.  Haskell sucks a 
>> lot less performance-wise than most other very high-level languages.
> 
> Faster than Java, C#, F#, Erlang, Clean, Lisp... But still not quite as 
> fast as C.

Nothing is faster than C, some wise men said. ;)

> And let's face it, millions of people can program in C. Why bother 
> learning Haskell?

Oh, you have a misunderstanding there:  far less people program today in 
C rather than Java or C#.  About just those poor souls coding Unix 
infrastructure... :P

>> Being not as intelligent as truly intelligent people is not the same 
>> as being stupid.  Endlessly pestering such bright people over 
>> reasonably basic stuff you still don't understand... well, that's 
>> stupid. ;)
> 
> ...and when nemesis says I'm stupid, I really *don't* care. :-P

Read again.

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nemesis wrote:
> Nothing is faster than C, some wise men said. ;)

Assembler is.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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