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Ability to fiddle isn't tied to static or dynamic programming, it's just every static language platform I've seen including The Haskell Platform neglects making it easier to fiddle. When trying to build complex software in Haskell, I find myself spending a lot of time commenting/uncommenting swaths of code, just so I can get part of a algorithm to load in GHCi. It sucks. What I wish would happen is GHCi allowed me to load just the things that type check, and skip the rest, so I can fiddle. This is definitely possible. Not compiling is great for production, but not while developing. Software is built in pieces, if I'm working on one piece, another statically unrelated piece shouldn't prevent me from working. In this regard Haskell GHCi (and many static languages), makes developing more complex than dynamic languages, but again it's not intrinsic. I also wish when I run my tests, it listed all the type errors, as well as run tests on the code that do type check. Having more safety mechanism in Haskell helps with writing correct code, but compiling doesn't mean the code works. Automated testing is still more useful for writing software that works. Haskell isn't as safe as many people think [1]. sort a = a ++ a -- it compiles, so it must sort
[1] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.8.0.0/docs/Prelude... |
Use `-fdefer-type-errors` (should work with both GHC and GHCi), all errors become warnings, and if you try to use a function which was compiled with an error, you get a runtime error.