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Simon Peyton Jones - Haskell is useless

A short clip of Simon Peyton Jones talking about the future of programming languages, saying Haskell is useless in the sense that pure programs cannot have effects, while mainstream languages are useful but unsafe. He describes languages converging, with ideas such as STM and LINQ moving between them.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN cites it constantly in language debates for his useful-versus-safe diagram and the convergence of languages, with commenters clarifying that his remark predates how Haskell handles effects.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
bunidanoable
Topic
programming language design
Format
interview
Level
intermediate
HN recommenders in dataset
2
HN mentions in dataset
20
Recommendation years in dataset
2012–2024

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • These are two issues, which a theoretically orthogonal but in practice not so much. These are known as soundness and completeness. A good talk on topic [1] Rust will reject a lot of sound programs, and that's a huge performance hit. You are hitting the …

    ernst_klim on Hacker News · 2023-10
    In Was Rust Worth It?

  • That must of course be "Haskell is useless" [VIDEO] But apart from that, his enthusiasm can even make the mseemingly most boring topic interesting. I'd personally start either at "the story of Haskell" Escape from the Ivory Tower [LINK] Or something more recent, about Epic's …

    ReleaseCandidat on Hacker News · 2024-06
    In Gerald Sussman: Programming is (should be) fun (2022) [video]

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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