— Scrive Labs

Why Haskell – 20 reasons

We chose Haskell as our development platform in SkrivaPå. Why? It was about a year ago and reasons were these:

  1. Proven
    Haskell was born in 1987, almost 25 years ago.
  2. Popular
    Everybody talks about Haskell these days.
  3. Easy install
    Haskell Platform solves all issues.
  4. Thousands of libraries
    Easily accessible on Hackage, easy to install using Cabal.
  5. Platforms
    Windows, Unix, MacOSX, Linux. Architectures PowerPC, x86, ARM. 32 and 64bit.
  6. Open
    Sources for every tool openly licensed, everything based on public specifications. Gratis!
  7. Toolbox
    Everything needed for effective and comfortable work: compiler, profiler, debugger, documentation, tests, repl. There are some bleeding edge toys in there!
  8. Parallel and concurrent
    Programming for multicores as easy as never before.
  9. Take your order
    Static typing gives a lot of safety. You are not going to pull a rabbit from any container!
  10. Avoid surprises
    Algebraic data types and pattern matching will not let you forget any special case.
  11. Type with a class
    Type class is a set of methods that define an interface in very flexible way.
  12. Templates done right
    Function and type can be defined in a very general way thanks to parametric polymorphism.
  13. Don’t walk into ambush
    Pure functions keep the promise: no side effects!
  14. Programmable semicolon
    Monads can do more than you can imagine.
  15. Laziness
    Operate infinite structures that exist only in you imagination.
  16. Smart compiler
    Compiler will infer types for you.
  17. Higher order function
    Higher level tools for higher level thinking.
  18. No pointers
    Automatic memory management as Haskell takes care of your emotional well being.
  19. Ecosystem
    Haskell cooperates well with code written in  C, Objective C, COM, SOAP, AppleAcript, Lua and others.
  20. You are not alone
    Haskell community is already large and still growing strong.
  21. Elegant and to the point
    Haskell can be loved.

We love Haskell to this day.

 

0 comments
Submit comment