What do you LISPers think of Haskell?

Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.spamfilter@virtualinfinity.net> writes:

> xahlee@gmail.com wrote:
>> Arc is one of the despicable worthless shit there is.
>> Arc is the type of shit that when some person becomes famous for his
>> achivement in some area, who began to sell all sort of shit and
>> visions just because he can, and people will buy it.
> That might be true, but I'd love it if you expounded on why you
> believe that? I don't have a lot of lisp experience, so I need
> someone to highlight facts about why Arc is bad comparatively.

As little lisp experience you may have, you have more than Xah.

Asking for advice to Xah in lisp matters (and probably in any other
matter), is like asking for financial advice to the first tramp you
meet.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

"This statement is false." In Lisp: (defun Q () (eq nil (Q)))

On 2008-08-24, Daniel Pitts wrote:
> xah...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Arc is one of the despicable worthless shit there is.
>
> > Arc is the type of shit that when some person becomes famous for his
> > achivement in some area, who began to sell all sort of shit and
> > visions just because he can, and people will buy it.
>
> That might be true, but I'd love it if you expounded on why you believe
> that? I don't have a lot of lisp experience, so I need someone to
> highlight facts about why Arc is bad comparatively.

i haven't actually used arc. My opinion of it is based on reading Paul
Graham's essays about his idea of some “100 year language” and
subsequent lisper's discussions on it this year here (most are highly
critical). Also, Wikipedia info gives some insight too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)

Paul's essay:
“The Hundred-Year Language”
http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

I consider one of the most wortheless essay. Worthless in the same
sense Larry Wall would have opinions on computer languages...

to fully detail will take several hours writing perhaps 2 thousands
words essay....

ok, perhaps a quick typing as summary of my impressions... but i know
all sort of flame will come.

Paul has some sort of infatuation with the concept of “hackers” (and
his languages is such that these “hacker” will like). I think this is
a fundamental problem in his vision.

If we look closely at the concept of “hacker”, from sociology's point
of view, there are all sort of problems rendering the term or notion
almost useless. In short, i don't think there is a meaningful class of
computer programer he calle “hackers” that one could say a computer
language is for them.

for example, hacker can be defined as knowledgeable programers, or
those exceptionally good at programing among professional programers,
or those who delights in technical details and their exploitation, or
those who are programers who tends to be extremely practical and
produce lots of useful codes, or those who's coding method heavily
relies on trial and error and less on formal methods or systems, or
perhas some element of all of the above. I don't mean to pick bones on
definitions, but i just don't see any sensible meaning in his frequent
use of the term in the context of designing a language.

put in another way... let's think about what langs are his “hackers”
like? would it be lisp?? perl?? or something such as Haskell? As you
know, these lang are quite different in their nature. However, it's
quite difficult to say which is the one hackers prefers. In some
sense, it's probably perl. But in another sense, it's lisp, since lisp
being unusual and has many qualities such as it's “symbols”and
“macros” concepts that allows it to be much more flexible at computing
tasks. But then, it could also be haskell. Certainly, lots of real
computer scientists with higher mathematical knowledge prefers it and
consider themselves real hackers in the classic sense of MIT's lambda
knight and ulimate lambda etc.

looking into detail on some of his idea about Arc's tech detail ... i
find them the most worthless.

so, yeah, in summary, i see arc as almost completely meritless, and as
a celebrity's intentional or unintentional effort to peddle himself.

Note, i find some of Paul's essays very insightful or i agree with,
such as one that talk about some psychology of nerds and highschool
bullies, and his opinion on OOP ...

----------------------------

here's some of my personal opinion on language design.

I think the criterions for “best” or “100-year” language is rather
very simple.

• it is easy to use. In the sense the masses can use it, not requiring
some advanced knowledge in math or computer science or practical
esoterica like unix bag.

• it is high level. This is related to easy to use. Exact, precise
definition of “High level” is hard to give, but typically it's those
so-called scripting langs, e.g. perl, python, php, tcl, javascript.
Typical features are typeless or dynamic typing, support many
constructs that do a lot things such as list processing, regex, etc.

• it has huge number of libraries. This can be part of the lang as
considered in java “API” or perl's regex or mathematica's math
functions, or can be bundled as many perl and python's libs, or as
external archive such as perl's cpan. The bottom line is, there are
large number of libraries that can be used right away, without having
to search for it, check reliability, etc.

the above are really down-to-earth, basic ideas, almost applicable to
anything else.

the tech geekers will you believe other things like garbage
collection, model of variable, paradigms like functional vs oop,
number systems, eval model like lazy or not lazy, closure or no, tail
recursion or no, has curry or no curry, does it have linder mayer
system or kzmolif type sytem, polymorphism yes?, and other moronic
things.

If you look at what lang becomes popular in the past 2 decades (thru
various website), basically those bubble up to top, are those with
good quality in hte above criterions. (e.g. perl, php, javascript,
visual basic.) C and Java are still at top, of course, because there
are other factors such as massive marketing done by Java, and C being
old and has been the standard low level system lang for decades.

(excuse me for typos and other errors... took me already a hour to
type and lots other newsgroup responses... will perhaps edit and put
on my website in the future...)

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

I believe he meant "timeless". Timeless might imply that it was very
important to provide a decent language for encoding algorithms,
and not so much to the initial size of libraries at year 0. Whether or
not the language is great for encoding algorithms (or any other
timeless qualities) is largely matter of opinion, as you have stated
previously.

>> there are all sort of problems rendering the term or notion almost useless.
This page may be of use, http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html,
although I'm guessing you've already read it and maybe even have an
essay for it.

In fact, I wouldn't go looking for a dictionary style definition,
since he used the word "hacker" to convey what he thought a hacker
was, so his article on "great hackers" would be very relevant:
http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Those language qualities you listed do seem to be a good measure for a
good language though.
It seems to me that Arc has the first 2 qualities but not the third.

On Aug 24, 6:13 pm, Ali <emailalicl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe he meant "timeless". Timeless might imply that it was very
> important to provide a decent language for encoding algorithms,
> and not so much to the initial size of libraries at year 0. Whether or
> not the language is great for encoding algorithms (or any other
> timeless qualities) is largely matter of opinion, as you have stated
> previously.
>
> >> there are all sort of problems rendering the term or notion almost useless.
>
> This page may be of use, http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html,
> although I'm guessing you've already read it and maybe even have an
> essay for it.

i red the jargon file, perhaps some 70% of it, in late 1990s online.

At the time, i appreciate it very much.

But today, i have came to realize that the maintainer Eric Raymond is
a selfish asshole.

For example, Wikipedia has this to say
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon_file

quote:

«Eric S. Raymond maintains the new File with assistance from Guy
Steele, and is the credited editor of the print version, The New
Hacker's Dictionary. Some of the changes made under his watch have
been controversial; early critics accused Raymond of unfairly changing
the file's focus to the Unix hacker culture instead of the older
hacker cultures where the Jargon File originated. Raymond has
responded by saying that the nature of hacking had changed and the
Jargon File should report on hacker culture, and not attempt to
enshrine it.[2] More recently, Raymond has been accused of adding
terms to the Jargon File that appear to have been used primarily by
himself, and of altering the file to reflect his own political views.
[3]»

Eric, one of the guy largely responsible for the Open Source movement
and plays a role a antagonistic to FSF. He also created a hacker logo
to sell himself. He's essay the Cathedral and Bazzar, which i read in
late 1990s, i consider stupid. You can often read his posts or
argument online in various places, and from those post you can see
he's often just a male ass.

Wikipedia has some illuminating summary of him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond

basically, a money hungry and selfish ass.

It used to also talk about how he supports the iraq war with some
racist undertone or some remarks he made about blacks ... i forgot the
detail but can be easily found in the article's history log.

He used to have a page on his website, not sure if it's still around,
about what he demands if people wants him to speak. Quite rude.

> In fact, I wouldn't go looking for a dictionary style definition,
> since he used the word "hacker" to convey what he thought a hacker
> was, so his article on "great hackers" would be very relevant:
> http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Paul is a interesting guy. I mean, his lisp achievements and credits
is quite sufficient for me to find him intelligent and interesting.

However, his's essays related to hackers i just find quite
wortheless... not even sufficient enough for me to scan ... as
comparison, i'd rather read text books related to sociology or
psychology.

... many famous people write essays. Philosophers, renowed scientists
of all areas, successful businessman, famous award laureates ...
often, perhaps majority, of such essays are rather riding on fame and
worthless in quality when judged in the long term like decades or
centuries ...

> Those language qualities you listed do seem to be a good measure for a
> good language though.
> It seems to me that Arc has the first 2 qualities but not the third.

i wouldn't say arc is good at all with respect to ease of use or
power.

for ease of use... first of all it uses lisp syntax, and still has
cons business. These 2 immediately disqualifies it for the masses as
easy to use. Even if we take a step back, then there's Scheme lisp, so
in no way arc is easier to use than say Scheme 5.

for power... i doubt if it is in any sense more powerful than say
Scheme lisp or common lisp. In comparison to the profileration of
functional langs like Haskell, Ocaml/f# and perhaps also erlang, Q,
Oz, Mercury, Alice, Mathematica ... the power of arc would be a
laughing stock.

... adding the fact such controversies as using ascii as char set (as
opposed to unicode), using html table as web design, no name space
mechanism (all these i gathered as hearsay or on Wikipedia) ... arc to
me is totally without merit. (NewLisp and Qi, yay!)

see also...
Proliferation of Computing Languages
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/new_langs.html

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

On Aug 25, 6:16 am, "xah...@gmail.com" <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> .... It used to also talk about how he supports the iraq war with some
> racist undertone or some remarks he made about blacks ... i forgot the
> detail but can be easily found in the article's history log.
>

You can find Raymond's remarks about blacks here:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond


| In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population
| but commit 50% of violent crimes; can
| anyone honestly think this is unconnected
| to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ
| lower than the general population? That
| stupid people are more violent is a fact
| independent of skin color.


--agt

On Aug 19, 5:30*pm, Jon Harrop wrote:

> Haskell's success rate at generating widely-used open source code is far
> lower than most other languages:

Your Debian install figures say nothing about "success rates", and do
nothing to compare this rate against "most other languages". Did you
compare against any other language than OCaml? No.

For example, what is the success rate of say, F# at generating widely-
used open source code?

I see nothing to justify your conclusions about the productivity of
*languages in general* based soley on the install figures of a handful
of tools on Debian.

All we can conclude here is that FFTW, a C library, is popular. At a
stretch you might make some conclusions about the effectiveness of the
ocaml-debian packaging team. Any other conclusion is lost in the
noise.

(BTW. this thread is worth it just to see Harrop and Xah Lee
discussing Haskell on a Lisp thread. I do believe this is how baby
trolls are born

Don Stewart wrote:
> On Aug 19, 5:30*pm, Jon Harrop wrote:
>> Haskell's success rate at generating widely-used open source code is far
>> lower than most other languages:
>
> Your Debian install figures say nothing about "success rates",

The Debian and Ubuntu popcon results cover billions of software
installations, hundreds of thousands of users from two of the most popular
Linux distributions and tens of thousands of packages. They are undoubtedly
among the most reliable quantitative sources of information for how widely
adopted open source projects have become.

The article I cited contains a thorough analysis based upon these objective
quantifications and it estimates the order of magnitude ratio of the
success rates of OCaml and Haskell for creating widely-used open source
software. The conclusion is that Haskell is an order of magnitude less
successful than OCaml.

> For example, what is the success rate of say, F# at generating widely-
> used open source code?

Unknown: no comparable data are available for F# because it is a proprietary
Microsoft language.

> I see nothing to justify your conclusions about the productivity of
> *languages in general* based soley on the install figures of a handful
> of tools on Debian.

You are misrepresenting both the conclusion and the evidence. I am
disappointed: even Ganesh Sittampalam managed to create a plausible
sounding objection, although his quantifications turned out to be nothing
more than wildly inaccurate guesses.

> All we can conclude here is that FFTW, a C library, is popular.

You can get a lot more out of these data if you analyse them properly.
Moreover, the analysis is quite easy: even a web programmer could do it.

> At a stretch you might make some conclusions about the effectiveness of
> the ocaml-debian packaging team.

On the contrary, the success of projects like FFTW, Unison and MLDonkey had
nothing to do with the OCaml-Debian packaging team.

> Any other conclusion is lost in the noise.

Here are the facts again:

.. 221,293 installs of popular OCaml software compared to only 7,830 of
Haskell.

.. 235,312 lines of well-tested OCaml code compared to only 27,162 lines of
well-tested Haskell code.

Those are huge differences. How else do you explain them?

> (BTW. this thread is worth it just to see Harrop and Xah Lee
> discussing Haskell on a Lisp thread. I do believe this is how baby
> trolls are born

I find it far more enlightening that you would ban me from the Haskell Cafe
mailing list and IRC channel in order to avoid discussion of your own
findings. You must be much less confident in your work than I am in mine.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u

>
> The Debian and Ubuntu popcon results cover billions of software
> installations, hundreds of thousands of users from two of the most popular
> Linux distributions and tens of thousands of packages. They are undoubtedly
> among the most reliable quantitative sources of information for how widely
> adopted open source projects have become.

This years results of the Debian and Ubuntu popularity contests are
based on 74011 submissions. There have never been more than 80,000
submissions in a single year.
This is hardly a comprehensive metric.

>
> The article I cited contains a thorough analysis based upon these objective
> quantifications and it estimates the order of magnitude ratio of the
> success rates of OCaml and Haskell for creating widely-used open source
> software. The conclusion is that Haskell is an order of magnitude less
> successful than OCaml.

The "article" you cite is your same bogus analysis of the debian
package popularity contest, basically it is a thinly veiled plug for
Flying Frog Consultancy.

parnell wrote:
>> The Debian and Ubuntu popcon results cover billions of software
>> installations, hundreds of thousands of users from two of the most
>> popular Linux distributions and tens of thousands of packages. They are
>> undoubtedly among the most reliable quantitative sources of information
>> for how widely adopted open source projects have become.
>
> This years results of the Debian and Ubuntu popularity contests are
> based on 74011 submissions. There have never been more than 80,000
> submissions in a single year.

That is obviously wrong given that the article cited 184,574 installs of
FFTW alone.

> This is hardly a comprehensive metric.

You appear to have neglected the Ubuntu popularity contest that account for
an order of magnitude more people again.

>> The article I cited contains a thorough analysis based upon these
>> objective quantifications and it estimates the order of magnitude ratio
>> of the success rates of OCaml and Haskell for creating widely-used open
>> source software. The conclusion is that Haskell is an order of magnitude
>> less successful than OCaml.
>
> The "article" you cite is your same bogus analysis of the debian
> package popularity contest, basically it is a thinly veiled plug for
> Flying Frog Consultancy.

In other words, you also have no testable objections to the analysis
presented in the article so you are resorting to ad-hominem attacks. I am
not surprised: you clearly do not put your money where your mouth is, as I
do.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u

In article <g922ta$20b$1@aioe.org>, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>
wrote:

> parnell wrote:
> >> The Debian and Ubuntu popcon results cover billions of software
> >> installations, hundreds of thousands of users from two of the most
> >> popular Linux distributions and tens of thousands of packages. They are
> >> undoubtedly among the most reliable quantitative sources of information
> >> for how widely adopted open source projects have become.
> >
> > This years results of the Debian and Ubuntu popularity contests are
> > based on 74011 submissions. There have never been more than 80,000
> > submissions in a single year.
>
> That is obviously wrong given that the article cited 184,574 installs of
> FFTW alone.
>
> > This is hardly a comprehensive metric.
>
> You appear to have neglected the Ubuntu popularity contest that account for
> an order of magnitude more people again.
>
> >> The article I cited contains a thorough analysis based upon these
> >> objective quantifications and it estimates the order of magnitude ratio
> >> of the success rates of OCaml and Haskell for creating widely-used open
> >> source software. The conclusion is that Haskell is an order of magnitude
> >> less successful than OCaml.
> >
> > The "article" you cite is your same bogus analysis of the debian
> > package popularity contest, basically it is a thinly veiled plug for
> > Flying Frog Consultancy.
>
> In other words, you also have no testable objections to the analysis
> presented in the article so you are resorting to ad-hominem attacks. I am
> not surprised: you clearly do not put your money where your mouth is, as I
> do.

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