On Mar 24, 2007, at 2:36 AM, Sebastian Sylvan wrote:
On 3/24/07, Chris Eidhof <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Given all these issues, I consider the only reasonable option is to
> discard the Prelude entirely. There will be no magic modules.
> Everything will be an ordinary library. HOFs like (.) are
available
> from Control.Function. List ops come from Data.List. Any general
> abstractions can be added in abstract Sequence, Monad, etc.
modules.
> Haskell will regain the kind of organic evolution whose lack
> currently causes Haskell to lose its lead over Python et al by the
> day.
I basically agree with a lot of the things you say. The only thing
is: it's so convenient to have the Prelude. I can just start writing
my haskell programs and don't have to worry about all kinds of
imports. And you'll end up being repetitive: you'll import (.) and
stuff like that in _every_ file. Yeah, this will definitely be more
modular, but if we go for it, it's going to be so much more (tedious)
work to create a new program.
The solution is simple:
* If there is a "module M where" clause in the beginning of the file,
then it's a "proper" module and shouldn't import the Prelude.
* If there is no module declaration then it's a "quick'n dirty script"
and should have the Prelude implicitly imported.
* Interactive interpreters should probably import the Prelude.
So if I'm writing a script, which has been working, then import
Control.Monad, it all suddenly stops working?
I also think that you want to minimize the differences between an
interpreted (interactive) version and a compiled version. It would be
very weird for first-time users if their scripts work in ghci but
break when they compile them.
I'm sorry for being so negative. I like the idea, but I don't like it
from a newbie-standpoint. The thing is: this is mostly handy for
power-users, maybe we should do it for power-users only? We can still
change the prelude to have no more code in there, but make it only a
bunch of imports?
-chris
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