Re:Dhall: A Gateway Drug to Haskell
by Karrot_Kream on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @08:40PM
(#31661844)
What are the problems y'all see in production then with Haskell code? I'm curious since I never ran my code in a prod setting so I don't know what one cares about when operating Haskell code.
Honestly, the problems I had with Haskell were mostly related to organization rather than tech. How recruitment would happen. What rules we would set in place to make sure the codebase didn't become overcomplicated. How to make sure people don't get engrossed in tech and neglect the business aspect. How to make sure a large part of the codebase is mundane enough that newcomers can contribute on it quickly.
The tech itself really works well, but it required either an org mature enough to do the things correctly, or a shop purely focused on haskell that would accept the complexity.
Also, sometimes the library ecosystem is a bit lacking. It wasn't an immovable roadblock, but we did write stuff that may have been available as a lib in other languages. This was a minor impediment for us, but it can get bad in other contexts.
That would be a nice "ask hn" :-)
Re:Dhall: A Gateway Drug to Haskell
by ParetoOptimal on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:48AM
(#31664142)
> Most people usually get there by getting hired in a place where the stack, library choices, etc. are made by people who had done haskell professionally before and have solved the problem you cite for the team.
That's very true and the case at my job. We've taught people with 0 Haskell experience to write useful production code in under a month.
The reason for that is that people who do haskell for a living are dwarfed by the hobbyist community which makes them invisible, and they're spread thin on maintaining the ecosystem. GHC, HLS and all the other good things there are are the work of people on their free time, while other, more successful languages simply have companies dedicating time, money and contracts to tooling.
All of that means that it's not easy to move from the hobbyist haskeller group to the paid haskeller group. Most people usually get there by getting hired in a place where the stack, library choices, etc. are made by people who had done haskell professionally before and have solved the problem you cite for the team.
Once you're in, the benefits of Haskell are tangible, otherwise people would stop using it, and there wouldn't be a professional community. That is not to say that there are no problems, it's just that they are different problems, and people that stick to haskell for their job usually do it as a tradeoff.