I'm pretty sure the biggest player using Haskell is Microsoft, which develops and maintains Haskell in the first place...

I don't think that's accurate. Microsoft has a role in the development and maintenance of Haskell because they currently employ Simon P. Jones, one of the big driving forces behind Haskell, as a researcher.

However, new versions of Haskell (the language) are created by temporary committees (which are not composed by Microsoft).

GHC (the main implementation) is an open source project with developers from different organizations. According to this page (https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/TeamGHC), SPJ is the only one employed by Microsoft. He is one of the core contributors and he owns a large part of the code base, but not to such an extent that GHC can be called a Microsoft project even if Microsoft would want that. Haskell is not a MS product, it has been under development since well before SPJ was employed by MS.

Finally, I'm not aware of MS funding the project beyond paying SPJ's wage.

I though MS was pushing towards F#. Is there any indication they plan to focus more on one or the other?

They're not focusing on Haskell commercially, but in Microsoft Research where they employ some of the main Haskell devs. A lot of their research has gone into F#, C# and .NET libraries (like LINQ).

There have been a bunch of 20% projects; but only recently have they started any full-time Haskell work, as far as I know.

One of the biggest(.) Google projects with Haskell is probably Ganeti ( https://github.com/ganeti/ganeti ), which is a mix of python and Haskell and has been around since 2008ish (although Haskell was introduced later, iirc).

We recently moved our main development to github so the repo seems a bit empty, we're certainly happy to get more contributors if you are interested, as the community is fairly small and specialized. Everyone is welcome.

Source: I'm one of the current main developers of the project.

(.) Note: I actually have no idea if it's the 'biggest'.

I helped out a bit with the BCL pretty-printer in my day. (Mostly contributed in-depth code reviews.)

Is Ganeti related to Ganpati? Sorry, it's been a bit since I left Google. Memory is fading.

Not at all, only the name is very similar :)

I just learned that we have a GUTS at my new employer, Bloomberg, too. But it has nothing to do with asking for a monorail between the Sydney offices.

There are only so many words. And many of them similar.

Lol at stating a fact and then citing thst you have no idea. Haha

Lol at the citation being the emoji of an anus, where he likely pulled the factoid from.

Microsoft and Facebook are also using Haskell in production.

A huge chunk of the site integrity bits (e.g. general spam prevention and application of this technology to other problem spaces like instant messages, etc.) for Facebook are done in Haskell and if you know Haskell and fancy working in London I am fairly certain that team is always on the lookout for new people.

And also happen to employ Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow, respectively, two of the originators of the GHC project.

Yes, please note that BigTechCo using something in production is not an endorsement that it's production-ready. Ironically, more often than not, it means the opposite. BigTechCo employs the best computer scientists in the world to make all of that stuff work together, frequently including the project's founders/BDFLs so they can get whatever changes they need rammed through. Your company does not have this luxury.

It is definitely an endorsement that it is ready, although maybe not we-search-code-monkeys ready.

A large part of our jobs is figuring things out.

People looking for so-called production-grade tech are usually looking for ready-for-managers tech in my experience.

I'm pretty sure Simon Peyton Jones is still at Microsoft Research.

I know about FB (Haxl, spam filtering etc) but what exactly is MS using Haskell "in production" for?