[epolanski]

And yet, while PHPs, Javas, and even nicher/newer languages like Kotlin, Clojure or Scala have plenty of killer software (software that makes it worth learning a language just to use that library/framework) Haskell has none after 30 years. Zero.

Mind you, I know and like Haskell, but its issues are highly tied to the failure of the simple haskell initiative (also the dreadful state of its tooling).

[gylterud]

There are lots of great libraries, like repa, servant, megaparsec, gloss, yampa… as well as bindings to lots of standard stuff. I consider parsing to be one of Haskell’s killer strengths and I would definitely use it to write a compiler.

There is also some popular user facing software like Pandoc, written in Haskell. And companies using it internally.

[epolanski]

The only non irrelevant compiler ever written in Haskell is for another borderline dead project: Elm.

[gylterud]

What are you on about?

The Agda compiler, Pugs, Cryptol, Idris, Copilot (not that copilot you are thinking of), GHC, PureScript, Elm…

These might not be mainstream, but are (or were for Pugs, but the others are current) important within their niche.

[milutinovici]

It has PostgREST, which is the heart of supabase

[dmead]

yea I agree. haskell was my primary language for several years in the 00s. it's since had almost zero industry uptake. Don't come at me with jane street or the one off startup.

I thought for a while I'd be able to focus on getting jobs that liked haskell. it never happened.

[chriswarbo]

I certainly wouldn't focus on getting a Haskell job. Yet they are out there; e.g. my current job is Haskell, and happens to be in the same sector (public transport) as my last job (which was mostly Scala).

Also, I've found Haskell appropriate for some one-off tasks over the years, e.g.

- Extracting a load of cross-referenced data from a huge XML file. I tried a few of our "common" languages/systems, but they all ran out of memory. Haskell let me quickly write something efficient-enough. Not sure if that's ever been used since (if so then it's definitely tech debt).

- Testing a new system matched certain behaviours of the system it was replacing. This was a one-person task, and was thrown away once the old system was replaced; so no tech debt. In fact, this was at a PHP shop :)

[dmead]

Yea of course, its not really the focus for me either way. my point was that how great haskell seemed in grad school didn't match up with the real world interest.

I use spark for most tasks like that now. Guido stole enough from haskell that pyspark is actually quite appealing for a lot of these tasks.

[instig007]

> Guido stole enough from haskell that pyspark is actually quite appealing for a lot of these tasks.

He didn't do his homework. Guido or whoever runs things around the python language committee nowadays didn't have enough mental capacity to realize that the `match` must be a variable bindable expression and never a statement to prevent type-diverging case branches. They also refuse to admit that a non-blocking descriptor on sockets has to be a default property of runtime and never assigned a language syntax for, despite even Java folks proving it by example.

[dmead]

I agree. but we get phillip wadler's list comprehensions

[myko]

I will not stand for this Xmonad slander

[dmead]

ahhh i was there, 3000 years ago when it was announced in IRC.

[instig007]

> also the dreadful state of its tooling

this is plain and unsubstantiated FUD

> Haskell has none after 30 years

> I know Haskell

I doubt it

[tome]

FYI instig007 is not part of the Haskell community but seems to occasionally lambast people about Haskell, risking giving the Haskell community a bad name: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199980

[instig007]

> but seems to occasionally lambast people about Haskell

If you are to add community notes to my comments, at least add the part that clarifies that I only lambast incompetence and lies.

> risking giving the Haskell community a bad name

as opposed to those that spread FUD, I suppose? It's not the first time I'm asking this question, so what's your take on people who inflate their credibility by telling lies about the tech they clearly don't know?

[dmead]

rar