On 8/16/2012 4:13, Invisible wrote:
> Does /any/ high-level language do this?

Depends what you mean by "high level", but yes. Ada, C#, FORTH, a few others 
here and there.

>> Does it handle threads running on various address spaces (i.e.,
>> distributed processing) well?
>
> The language itself does not include this feature. You would have to use
> some kind of library.

I guess being functional has some advantages here.

>> Can you write programs that notice your
>> SQL schema has changed and modifies the running program to account for
>> that?
>
> Since it's not possible to receive notifications for schema changes in the
> first place, I don't see how this is feasible.

You are allowed to poll. ;-)

>> Can you compile and distribute Haskell code, let other people use it,
>> and then release new object code that is compatible with the existing
>> code people already wrote and compiled without breaking things?
>
> No.

See, that's exactly the target market for C#. Or rather for .NET. C# is a 
component-oriented language that happens to be OO. F# is a 
component-oriented language that happens to be (somewhat) functional. Etc.

> Haskell is usually distributed in source form. Partly that's because the
> community is small, and nobody has the resources to compile their code for
> every target platform. Partly it's because most Haskell code is open-source
> anyway. But partly it's because the extant Haskell implementations have very
> poor object code compatibility.

And that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. :-)

>> How elegantly does it interface to dynamic languages like javascript?
>
> What do you mean by "interface"?

Can you invoke a javascript library as if it were written in Haskell? I.e., 
is it as easy to invoke something like javascript as it is to invoke 
something like C?

> The Leksah IDE compiles as you type, and highlights compilation errors in
> near-realtime. (Like, there's a delay of a couple of seconds.)

Not bad.

> More to the point, most of the questions above aren't about the language
> itself, they're about all the supporting infrastructure that goes with a
> language to make it useful. While these are obviously important things, they
> aren't part of the core language.

Well, if your language can't handle dynamic loading or can't handle 
object-code distribution, then these are inherent in the language. I.e., if 
type inference is such that you have to do whole-program compilation for it 
to work, then you can't link in new code at runtime.

> In summary: If you're saying that C# has better tools and better libraries
> for doing real-world stuff, then I have no argument. If you're saying that
> the C# language design is superior, then I must disagree.

Not superior. Superior at various tasks.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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