
The Haskell Elephant in the Room - tenslisi
https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/crypto.html
======
anaphor
There are also a lot of traditional finance companies using Haskell[1]. And,
historically some of the people who created the language itself and have
worked on GHC (and other compilers), or contributed heavily to the ecosystem
have worked for traditional banks[2].

I don't mention them to encourage people to attack these people, but it comes
off as a bit selective to focus on the people using your language for
cryptocurrency when it's also used heavily by traditional fintech companies,
as well as defense contractors, and even for large retail chains (Target uses
it for data analysis). Facebook also uses it for their spam detection system.
Why are all of these uses fine and cryptocurrency is not? And if they also
aren't fine, then how should we solve this problem? Start non-
profits/charities that specifically use Haskell, and somehow make those the
majority of the available jobs that use it? That seems pretty infeasible
unless you want to solve the broader problem of these jobs existing in the
first place.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/6p2x0p/list_of_com...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/6p2x0p/list_of_companies_that_use_haskell/)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Augustsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Augustsson),
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekmett/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekmett/),
[https://stackoverflow.com/users/83805/don-
stewart](https://stackoverflow.com/users/83805/don-stewart)

~~~
pushcx
The "What is happening?" and "How is it happening?" sections of the article
spend 900 words differentiating legal financial services from cryptocurrency
scams.

~~~
anaphor
I disagree with the idea that traditional legal financial services commit less
fraud than cryptocurrency scams do. They just get away with it easier.

> Normally these frauds are recognized for what they are quite quickly and the
> courts and regulatory bodies can clean up the mess and rectify the damages
> to those who have been misled

That just comes off as total BS to me. How many regular people were awarded
damages after the 2008 meltdown, which was due to massive fraud in the
mortgage industry?

~~~
still_grokking
> regulatory bodies can clean up the mess and rectify the damages to those who
> have been misled

That seems true. The system relevant banks got their bailout. Regular people
OTOHS are not system relevant. So everything's fine. /s

------
tbenst
I have great respect for Stephen Diehl and love his writing. But I must
respectfully disagree. I think it’s fantastic that Haskell is seeing more
paying jobs and corporate sponsored development thanks to crypto, and indeed
Haskell can _help_ reduce fraud in cryptocurrency, like what happened with the
Ethereum’s DAO.

The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting but
IMHO profoundly misguided. Crypto is not a fad; it is here to stay (or at
least for some currencies!). He may disagree but it’s hard to imagine bitcoin
disappearing in the next decade.

I see the challenge more about what excites the current, established Haskell
community (linear types! Freer monads!) vs the corporate community, who want
maintainable and forward compatible code. Crypto companies could conceivably
resist the traditionally fast pace of GHC development. Indeed, a lot of money
rides on there being no exploitable bugs.

For all my respect of Stephen and his tremendous technical expertise, I’m
disappointed to see this argument being leveled as an armchair economist
condemning his peer’s work on moral grounds. I think a different, equally
rational person could look at crypto and see a future in it, and I don’t think
we should cast aside people for having different future expectations.

Disclosure: I am an investor in Kadena, a blockchain implemented in Haskell

~~~
ordinaryradical
> The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting
> but IMHO profoundly misguided. Crypto is not a fad; it is here to stay

By comparing cryptocurrencies to wildcat banks, he was not making a statement
about cryptocurrency's longevity but about its utility.

Money laundering and child pornography are not fads, and for those two reasons
alone there will probably always be value in non-fiat currencies that preserve
the user's anonymity. That does not make cryptocurrency something any
community or individual should want a long-term association with.

~~~
owl57
> Money laundering

You mean the trade-off between global surveillance and easier life for some
sorts of businesses. Is it immediately obvious which of these is more worth
supporting?

> and child pornography

Oh yeah, think of the children. Never gets old.

------
bondarchuk
Very much a generic anti-cryptocurrency rant, and very little haskell-specific
clarifications. I understand not wanting to name specific projects (Cardano
comes to mind; " _Cardano is a blockchain platform built on the groundbreaking
Ouroboros proof-of-stake consensus protocol, and developed using the Haskell
programming language: a functional programming language that enables Cardano
to pursue evidence-based development, for unparalleled security and
stability._ "), however it would be interesting to have some examples of
haskell developments that are fueled specifically by cryptocurrency
applications. FTA: " _the economic machinery that shapes everything we do and
informs the problems we chose to spend our cycles on_ "; what are these
specific problems?

~~~
analyte123
This is an article about a giant pot of questionably earned money buying
influence in a software ecosystem that he's been a big part of. But this is
hardly the first time for this, in other cases the pot of questionably earned
money came from selling people's data for ads or from Windows licenses.

The question in all of these cases is what specific bad influences the money
can have on the software ecosystem and how community standards and governance
can mitigate them. I don't really see a lot of answers in this article besides
ill-defined ethical compromise of developers. I skimmed the book he mentioned
(The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism) which sounds
interesting but it doesn't really make its own case very well: half of the
"extremist" citations are from anonymous online commenters and you can't go 2
paragraphs without straight up name-calling and ham-fisted guilt by
association.

~~~
sukilot
It's not buying influence, it's "blood money" \-- profiting from crime by
selling things to criminals. When Prada sells luxury clothes to drug lords,
the problem isn't that the drug lords influence Prada

------
raphlinus
I've been concerned about this for Rust too, as a lot of the published jobs
and high profile projects (including Libra) are in the cryptocurrency sector.
For example, one of the most promising rival GUI toolkits, iced, is being
sponsored by Cryptowatch. Fortunately, the growth of other sectors is robust
enough that if all cryptocurrency were to fall into the ocean, Rust would be
impacted but not massively so.

~~~
sanxiyn
Rust's adoption in the cryptocurrency sector is massive indeed. Parity
Technologies and OpenEthereum is the most well known, but both Stellar
Development Foundation and Zcash Foundation (both are among top 30
cryptocurrencies) are rewriting their main node implementation in Rust. I'd
say at this point Rust has more adoption than both Haskell (Cardano) and OCaml
(Tezos).

~~~
loxs
There is an ongoing effort to implement a Tezos node in Rust

------
c3534l
Cryptocurrency enables people to make anonymous monetary transactions. Also,
so does cash. Drug dealers and criminals still very much prefer cash. Is it
wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their
association with cash? Should we be worried about users associating your
favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions which subvert the
traditional role and spying capacity of large financial institutions? This is
the first I've ever heard anyone suggest that Haskell is associated with
criminality in any way. Its associated with academics, and nerds, and maybe
even hobby programmers. But if I bring up Haskell among a group of people,
criminal enterprises is not going to be in the 100 top-associated things with
that language. There is no elephant, the connection is strenuous, and if such
an elephant existed, it would not be worthy of serious consideration.

~~~
spopejoy
It's worth noting that the author's company is in the private blockchain
field, complete with a smart contract language under their belt, in Haskell.

Indeed, it's not the first time that a private blockchain partisan has
attempted to tar all of "public" blockchain/crypto as a lawless amoral
cesspool. R3 made similar claims in years past. In truth, there's been equal
or more FUD thrown at private by public zealots too. But it's not confidence-
inspiring to see this kind of tribalism, and it speaks to a conflict of
interest (at least in R3's case, who were signalling to governments that
"private is safer").

The broad brush is FUD. There are any number of crypto efforts that are not
fraudulent. Grin and zcash come to mind. Ethereum itself is hardly a criminal
effort. The claim that this technology has not advanced the field is simply
laughable. Sure, there's a lot of technobabble and money being raised around
nothing, what else is new.

Anybody in the fintech industry pointing fingers at crypto need to take a look
in the mirror. Crypto is a tiny speck compared to the modern financial system.
That's not to excuse fraud and shady stuff, but companies servicing hedge
funds, private equity and megabanks have zero moral ground from which to point
fingers.

~~~
sukilot
What private block chain?

Looks like a database backed web app for connecting financial data feeds.

[https://www.adjoint.io/connect/](https://www.adjoint.io/connect/)

~~~
spopejoy
It's a recent pivot/rebrand. As of May 2019 their hero copy was "Adjoint
empowers enterprises to achieve new levels of efficiency and control by
delivering blockchain technology built specifically for the needs of the
financial industry."[1]

Also, Stephen Diehl was actively promoting smart contracts and blockchain
technology in Haskell until recently. [2]

1-
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190513032812/https://www.adjoi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190513032812/https://www.adjoint.io/)

2 - [http://internetofagreements.com/2017/12/18/stephen-diehl-
adj...](http://internetofagreements.com/2017/12/18/stephen-diehl-adjoint-
smart-contracts-for-new-entrepreneurs/)

------
dpc_pw
When your language is so tiny and unpopular that a growth of couple of small
projects in an industry your don't like can overshadow the whole existing
community...

If you create neutral open source tool like a programming language, you have
to be OK with people using it to do stuff that you don't approve of.

And also, it's OK to have your own opinion about something and share it, but
in complex matters you have to admit that there's a possibility that you're
wrong. I think TSLA and a some other money losing overhyped companies are a
FED-induced bubble, terrible investment etc. but so far it works for people
who invest in them, so maybe I am wrong, and who am I to make decisions for
other people anyway?

~~~
rimjongun
Let me take a crack at this.

“ When your language is so tiny and unpopular that a growth of couple of small
projects in an industry your don't like can overshadow the whole existing
community”

So you decide to open your argument with an insult to the community... Not a
great showing.

“ If you create neutral open source tool like a programming language, you have
to be OK with people using it to do stuff that you don't approve of.”

So I have to be okay with crime and scams? I can’t decide to call attention to
it and recommend that people don’t let the bad influence guide the direction
of the whole language?

“ I am wrong, and who am I to make decisions for other people anyway?”

Good thing this article didn’t try to do that.

~~~
dpc_pw
> So you decide to open your argument...

Please don't expect anything too serious from me. :D

> I can’t decide to call attention to it and recommend that people don’t let
> the bad influence guide the direction of the whole language?

I can't see how even Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin teamed up and backed by a
lot of money, could break ... let's say... C++ if they got on the design
committee. Are they going to make the type system more totalitarian-state
friendly? Is memory safety features better for building tools of state
oppression? Are they going to introduce new features and libraries that make
it more useful as a tool of industrial-level genocide?

> “ I am wrong, and who am I to make decisions for other people anyway?” >
> Good thing this article didn’t try to do that.

What did it try to do then?

This whole article can be TL;DR with: Some people found Haskell useful to
write their software and they support Haskell development now and I don't like
what that software is for, so let's do something about it.

Why?

I think there's a lot of people in Open Source community that can't separate
technical and free speech (and use) aspects of their work from their moral
beliefs and keep conflating the two, trying to use their beloved OS projects
as a tool in yet another moral crusade of their choosing.

PS. Come to think of it, maybe Haskell compilers should change the license to
some custom non-Open-Source license that says: "only programs that are
technically and morally pure can be compiled". ;)

~~~
rimjongun
It’s not an either or, you’re making up an extreme purity test that just isn’t
there.

------
the_af
I knew Stephen Diehl rang a bell! He is the author of this very useful primer
on tools & basics of the Haskell dev environment: "What I Wish I Knew When
Learning
Haskell"([http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/](http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/)).
I recommend it as a practical overview, though of course it doesn't replace
actually learning Haskell.

------
nine_k
I think this is a rather strange way of thinking.

Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay
away from Fortran!

C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C!

Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with
an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with
such a foul pedigree.

This can be continued ad nauseam, until the whole of the civilization is
marked as indecent. Nearly every scientific discovery and techology
achievement has been used, or attempted to be used, for some purpose one might
find objectionable.

Instead we could realize that tools are outside morals. A knife could be used
to cut bread or to cut throats, and it's not the knife's decision, but that of
its user. The very same thing applies to everything, from nuclear fission to
functional programming.

If you know what's the right, virtuous thing to do in the world, do not
hesitate, go and do it. Use the most fitting tool for that job. Do not mind if
that tool is used for whatever other, less noble purpose, it's not the tool's
fault.

~~~
burkaman
I realize the article is very vaguely written, but I don't think the argument
is "Haskell has been used for cryptocurrency and that taints it forever."

I read it as "A significant portion of jobs and funding in the Haskell
ecosystem come from cryptocurrency organizations, giving them a lot of
influence over the future of the language and the community." It's about who
controls development of the tool _right now_ , not how the tool might be used,
or who has been involved in the past.

~~~
nine_k
Can mathematics be _developed_ for nefarious purposes?

What kind of taint the current influence of the crypto-currency industry could
leave on the _technical side_ of the language?

If these guys are toxic within the development community, then, well, we have
to somehow handle it — but again, we've seen highly prolific _and_ highly
toxic OSS contributors who wielded very different, "more noble" values, in the
past. The problem may be the attitude, not the industry affiliation.

~~~
mcguire
If you want to use Fortran today, the jobs are essentially all government
contracting. If you want to use Haskell today, the jobs are essentially all
cryptocurrency. If you don't want to get into government contracting (which is
hard to get out of), or if you don't want to do cryptocurrency, you don't get
to use Fortran or Haskell.

What happens if the bottom falls out of the cryptocurrency job market? Does
Haskell become Scheme, a language used only for language research?

~~~
leephillips
Fortran is used all over for high performance computing, not just in
government contracting. Scheme is not only used for language research. A large
part of Julia, a pragmatic language for technical computing, is written in
Scheme.

~~~
eigenspace
> A large part of Julia, a pragmatic language for technical computing, is
> written in Scheme.

No, not really. The parser is written in FemtoLisp (a Scheme dialect), but
that's it. It's not actually doing anything other than the parsing, and
there's actually work being done to replace that with a pure julia parser.

~~~
leephillips
In the first paper¹ describing the language design, by its creators, they
state that:

“Our implementation of Julia consists of 11000 lines of C, 4000 lines of C++,
and 3500 lines of Scheme”.

[1] [https://julialang.org/blog/2012/08/design-and-
implementation...](https://julialang.org/blog/2012/08/design-and-
implementation-of-julia/)

~~~
eigenspace
That's from 2012 when the language was in version 0.1. We're now in version
1.4 (1.5 launching soon!). At this point, 3.1% of the julia git repo is
femptlisp (scheme), but I can assure you that is not being used for any heavy
lifting or scientific computations. It's for the parser.

------
alexmingoia
_”For a while it has been a public secret the Haskell ecosystem has become
increasingly entangled with an unsavoury variety in the cryptocurrency sector
as one of primary mechanisms for funding development.”_

And those would be? I code in Haskell every day and I have no idea what he’s
talking about.

~~~
chrisseaton
This is one of those articles that attempts to talk about some situation to
make it more common knowledge, but is written in such an incredibly abstract
way that all you can really take away from it is 'some unknown people are
upset about some unknown issue'.

I feel like this 'elephant in the room' article doesn't tell me what the
elephant is, why it's in the room, or why people don't want it to be in the
room.

~~~
gwbas1c
Just look at the final section, quoted:

> Painfully, some of the very founding contributors to Haskell itself are the
> ones deepest involved in this ring.

> In this new era the Haskell community itself has simply become a tool to buy
> legitimacy and pump token values. The reputation of our community is now
> used to defraud the public and convince non-technical users of the soundness
> of an utterly unsound investment.

> I have avoided names ... however core Haskell companies such as Well-Typed,
> Tweag and FP Complete have been deeply complicit in building up this crypto
> industry for years now.

The article isn't easy to skim, and I think that's the point. The author wants
to focus more on why cryptocurrency is a scam, and less on who's guilty.

~~~
chrisseaton
Maybe it's just me, but these sentences are so vague and indirect as to mean
nothing to me.

I think it's a shame because if you're going to accuse someone of something,
at least make your accusation clear and direct so they can respond to it
specifically.

------
tiew9Vii
If you search for Haskel jobs a large number seem to be block chain based.

When you look further a lot seem to be around smart contracts.

If you are interested in language design smart contracts are an interesting
research area, you are basically getting paid well to design and research your
own language.

What I fail to see is any viable product on the other end. There’s a few
companies I can think off who have been recruiting Haskel developers for smart
contracts but I can’t see a product, devs are just taking paid work in a
language they like using and these companies are sucking up vc funding.

I refuse to speak to recruiters about a blockchain company heavily recruiting
where I am as I am not smart enough for language design/research and more
importantly I don’t see a viable product. I know a few other
friends/colleagues refuse to speak to the same company due to being
blockchain/not seeing a product. When I see things like this it also reaffirms
my thoughts, VC backed companies heavily pushing through blockchain but it’s
not a ready product [https://smallcaps.com.au/asx-delays-launch-blockchain-
settle...](https://smallcaps.com.au/asx-delays-launch-blockchain-settlement-
technology/)

------
andreavaccari
No matter your position on this, please take a moment to watch the excellent
response by Charles Hoskinson.

[https://youtu.be/dHo_EUyShOg](https://youtu.be/dHo_EUyShOg)

------
xg15
I find it rather telling that almost none of the crypto advocates in this
thread make any argument that cryptocurrencies are _not_ shady. Instead, the
counterarguments brought forward are essentially:

\- "it's not the tool's fault that it's used for shady stuff"

\- "so what, other people are scammers, too!"

\- "there are so many warnings against cryptocurrencies, it's getting boring"

\- "yes, crypto has scams, but maybe some of them are _good_ scams!"

\- "the author is biased!"

\- "the author should give more details!"

That's not exactly a confidence-inspiring picture of the crypto community.

~~~
dpc_pw
"Crypto community" is not a unified group of people, holding hands and singing
"kumbaya", you know?

Quite the opposite - fights and accusing almost all competing projects of
technical and/or moral failures are a bread and butter of crypto.

It's safe to say that most people in crypto space admits that the space is
somewhat shady. How else could it be? Money are involved so it attracts people
trying to exploit it and brings the worst side of many, otherwise decent
participants, and anyone can create yet another crypto project and there's
nothing to stop them. And it's always "your word and opinion against mine"
kind of thing.

BTW. It's funny how many people on HN, have no problem with "regular" SV
companies often based on: praying on dark marketing patterns, human dopamine
addiction, data collection, overly optimistic return projections and so many
other "sins", but are quick to discredit "crypto" as a whole, to the point
where they would ban it from using their favorite programming languages. :D

~~~
tdeck
I didn't see anyone discussions banning crypto users from Haskell - it's
certainly not in the original article. The point was about which actors have
the most influence on the community. Apparently the author is also very
concerned about companies like Facebook which you might call more respectable.

------
praptak
To someone not familiar with Haskell funding, can anybody explain the quote
below?

 _" For a while it has been a public secret the Haskell ecosystem has become
increasingly entangled with an unsavoury variety in the cryptocurrency sector
as one of primary mechanisms for funding development."_

I mean, what exactly is this "unsavoury variety in the cryptocurrency sector"
and how is Haskell tied to it?

~~~
dtseng123
If you write Haskell and want a job, most of the positions available are with
crypto related companies.

~~~
praptak
This sheds some light on the topic - thanks. Still, the author states that
Haskell's reputation is used to legitimize bad business. It seems to me that
shady companies using the language internally is not enough to raise alarm
about it.

Is there some kind of (un-)official sponsorship from (supposedly) shady
actors?

~~~
how_gauche
Worked at a Haskell crypto startup. Your analysis of cause and effect is wrong
-- crypto people are attracted to Haskell because it has features that are
_excellent_ for the domain, not because they are interested in "copping shine"
from it or whatever.

~~~
praptak
To be clear, it's the author's analysis, which I'm trying to understand, not
mine.

------
akyu
"Adjoint Treasury is a real-time payments and settlement platform for
corporate treasury"

Stephen Diehl CTO and Founder at Adjoint

I feel our author may not be entirely impartial here...

~~~
sanxiyn
I am not sure what you are trying to imply.

~~~
rsstack
I think the implication is "old school financial institutions don't like
cryptocurrencies because they will make them obsolete".

so don't agree with the statement or the implication that it's relevant, but I
think that's what the person above meant.

~~~
akyu
This is not what I meant.

------
exdsq
Weird, seeing this is Stephen Diehls company summary:

"Automate financial controls and processes in your corporate treasury with
inter-company loans, virtual account management, powerful APIs and a
distributed ledger made for financial audibility & compliance."

[https://www.adjoint.io/](https://www.adjoint.io/)

~~~
p0llard
What are you getting at?

There's a pretty big difference between corporate treasury software and
cryptocurrency scams? Unless you're trying to argue that anything related to
finance is a scam?

I don't see what point you're trying to make, it seems such an irrelevant
comment that it makes me question your motive and wonder if you're trying to
smear Stephen.

~~~
exdsq
He's working on the same ledger tech but centralised, and calling out firms
working on blockchains unrelated to scams like OneCoin.

Edit: To be clear, I like his blog posts normally and am not trying to smear
him. I'm just saying it's not a fair comparison.

~~~
p0llard
> He's working on the same ledger tech but centralised

Cryptographic ledger technology has been around since forever (the 70s to be
precise): just look at Git, SUNDR, etc.

I believe he's specifically calling out firms working on _cryptocurrencies_ ;
cryptocurrencies are just one application of cryptographic distributed
ledgers.

~~~
exdsq
Sure, but the companies he specifically named are working on similar projects
that's all.

Edit: In fact I don't know of a single company using Haskell in the crypto
space I'd define as a 'scam'

------
pron
I see this problem with formal methods, which are also increasingly used in
the cryptocurrency world. I compare their use there to the claim that a
tightrope is safe because it's anchored to towers assembled from cards made of
the strongest titanium alloy.

Having said that, I doubt the impact of Haskell's reputation on cryptocurrency
users, technical or otherwise. The myth that Haskell results in more correct
programs might still be alive in portions of the Haskell community despite the
failure to support the claim with any evidence, but few outside that community
have ever heard of that myth, let alone believe it.

------
tharne
I think that fact that Haskell is being used in this way is a great thing for
the language.

Criminals and criminal enterprises operate in a high pressure, high-stakes
environment. If criminals are using a tool for something it typically means
that tool works and works well. That's why those pictures you see in the news
of terrorists in Afghanistan always show a bunch of guys in the back of Toyota
pickup with a 50 cal mounted on it. Toyota makes a great vehicle that does the
job. I'm sure Toyota is not thrilled about the association, but it speaks to
the build quality of their vehicles.

------
kerkeslager
"Haskell elephant" is such a missed portmanteau opportunity.

------
krick
I don't really care for how naïve this description of "how economy works" is
or isn't, but being upset that instead of Haskell being used virtually
nowhere, it is finally used _somewhere_ is pretty hilarious.

~~~
chriswarbo
Haskell's unofficial motto is "avoid 'success at all costs'", which is
referenced near the end of the article. Piggybacking on crypto fraud would be
a cost that's worth avoiding.

~~~
Vosporos
Very well-put, thank you.

------
rmrfrmrf
At this point, the entire financial sector is decoupled from actual
productivity, and to pass moral judgement of one highly exploitative industry
over another solely due to one's ability to be regulated seems myopic, at
best.

------
hannofcart
What is it about Haskell that makes it a hot candidate for use in
cryptocurrency applications? Can someone here shed some light? Read the
article but it mostly seems to be a diatribe against crypto on philosophical
grounds. I wish it were meatier on the technical reasons for this alleged
relationship between Haskell and crypto industry.

~~~
twat
Haskell always struck me as a language you'd want to use to feel superior to
the people who code in JS and python, and crypto always struck me as a field
you'd want to work in to feel superior to the people who work in industries
that actually generate profits.

Also, another possible reason is that many crypto people tend to confuse
complexity with ingenuity. While the bitcoin whitepaper tries to make a
complex topic as simple as possible, a great many crypto companies and people
purposely use language that is needlessly convoluted and verbose.

Perhaps they're doing it on purpose to seem smarter?

~~~
tsss
Do you even know what "verbose" means? Haskell is obviously the exact opposite
of verbose. In fact some more verbosity often makes it easier to understand.

~~~
rjknight
In context, the "language" GP was referring to was the (presumably English)
language in crypto currency white papers which is "needlessly convoluted and
verbose". This was being contrasted with the concise language of the original
Bitcoin white paper. It's not about programming languages.

~~~
twat
Yea what this guy said ^

------
duxup
So Haskell may have a lot of ties to cryptocurrency and related things.

That makes me wonder:

If a language has a large group of what might be seen as unsavory groups,
people, or just a lot of folks with a specific ideology / opinion(s). (let's
just assume it is true for argument's sake here, I don't know enough / I'm not
really saying it is true about Haskell)

DOES that change how the language develops?

Does it change, anything?

Have we ever seen that happen before?

Granted even if not I'm not dismissing the article, just wondering.

~~~
raphlinus
Two things come to mind as relevant to this query.

First, the Red language (a variant of Rebol) tied itself to blockchain and
created a token, though looking at their homepage now this seems less of a
central focus.

Second, the Urbit project (which incorporates the Nock and Hoon languages,
among other things), was founded by a controversial neo-reactionary figure.
The project seems to be moving forward without him, and does not seem to be
promoting those ideologies, but still carries that association. In addition to
that, the "business model" for Urbit also seems to be tied to cryptocurrency.

~~~
jlehman
A significant aspect of Urbit is its use of the Ethereum blockchain (called
UrbitID), but not to produce any form of cryptocurrency—it's used to produce a
form of cryptographic asset that more closely resembles property, since
ownership of that asset (called a ship) confers value in the form of an
identity within a network. DNS is to ICANN as UrbitID is to Ethereum. The
regulatory aspect of who's who is decentralized rather than centralized.

Business models on Urbit don't really have to do with sale of ships
though—they're finite and not meant for high-frequency trading. Business
models that are emerging are more likely to involve providing services to
users of the network, just as domain sales are a small fraction of the
"business model" for the internet.

------
mkatx
I would equate crypto currency more with trading collectables. If Haskell was
financed with profits from trading magic the gathering cards, would it be
different? Some people trading MTG cards might be unsavory, some might try to
scam you, but that's the market, not the collectable itself.

Because this article, in my opinion, misidentified the scam, I just don't
agree that crypto profit supporting Haskell is a problem. If there are
unsavory actors in the community, that's also a different thing, and isn't the
fault of crypto.

It seems this piece leaves no room between scammer and victim. It's certainly
just an opinion that crypto is a scam, and it seems the author is projecting
that opinion on individuals in the Haskell community, but it sounds like those
individuals benefit the community more than harm it.

------
apatheticnpc
Idk I think the haskell elephant in the room is the poor beginner and
intermediate resources,poor tooling,lack of libraries and poor documentation
but maybe that's just me people totally don't want to use haskell because it's
involved in some cryptocurrency scams

------
fsckboy
so many people are fond of saying "porn launched all these different
technologies" (I say it that way because I am not fond of saying it) that I
think this post would better be summed up as "crypto is the new porn"

meaning, it more than doesn't matter if a technology finds a unsavory
butlucrative market, precisely that lucre is what funds early stage
development of the technology to the point where it can grow into commodity
markets.

(and this is more "the elephant in the Haskell room" than any type of Haskell
elephant)

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
I get why he doesn't like crypto currency stuff. Why is it so toxic if haskell
is used for it? Is there a suggestion that those that participate in coin
related projects should be persona non grata.

Is there really no discussion about software as a dual use technology?

~~~
ojnabieoot
The issue the author is worried about is that the crypto companies are taking
advantage of Haskell's public prestige to imply a level of robustness and
rigor that doesn't actually exist: this incredibly incredibly shady company
can't be _that_ shady since they're using such fancy technology.

> In this new era the Haskell community itself has simply become a tool to buy
> legitimacy and pump token values. The reputation of our community is now
> used to defraud the public and convince non-technical users of the soundness
> of an utterly unsound investment.

So when people realize that 50% of crypto entrepreneurs are scammers and the
other 50% are deluded, and the bubble pops, there is a serious concern that
Haskell will be publicly understood as a "cryptocurrency" language and will
suffer a reputational hit.

------
kreetx
Although I think this article is informative about pointing out the crypto
connection (there sure are many well known haskell devs related to crypto, to
Cardano specifically), but I think it's way too negative. There are scams in
cryptocurrencies, sure, but do some of them have real value? I think they do.

But perhaps somebody knows the answer to these questions instead:

\- is Cardano itself a scam? (= are the people related immoral?)

\- are there more cryptocurrencies developed in haskell and are these scams?

Other than that, I don't really see the influence on the ecosystem - what are
some concrete examples here?

~~~
rstarast
You made me look up the IOHK (Cardano developers) team page again, it's
hilarious: [https://iohk.io/en/team/](https://iohk.io/en/team/)

------
scottlocklin
It's funny, I remember looking at Quorum's anonymity layer Constellation and
thinking to myself how odd it was they wrote it in Haskell; generally a sign
there are no adults in the room when coming from a JPMC tier company where
actual money will be piped through it. It turned out they had to rewrite it in
Java to get it to function reliably.

I have no opinion on Cardano,but obviously something from the ML family is
useful if you want to build smart contracts.

------
cies
I dont share the concern. I remember that the Haskell project took a lot MS
money in research grants, and this was discussed as "potentially damaging to
the project".

Crypto currency is no different for me from other financial products: they
have the potential to be very dangerous for the users of such services. Now
often this is because of a lack of information (ponzi schemes, sub-prime
mortgage packages), but with crypto all the rules of the game are opensource
:)

------
prionassembly
> "what economists call non-productive assets"

That's not a technical term nor a "term of art" in economics. Google Scholar
returns results from management and accounting journals, as well as some
pseudo-economics ("heterodox") pamphlets.

~~~
ogogmad
How do you know what's "pseudo" and not "pseudo" in economics? Given that it
isn't a science. I'm genuinely curious.

~~~
Barrin92
Economics is a science. You get an idea what's 'pseudo' or not by working in
or familiarizing yourself with the field. Say, The New neoclassical synthesis
is very much as standard as it gets, whereas Marxist or Austrian economics
exist on the fringes.

In general something is pseudo-scientific if it operates outside of the
formalisms or tools of that particular discipline, especially if it pretends
that it does not.

~~~
CyberDildonics
Economics is not something that can be tested easily on a large scale, so most
of it becomes about trying to explain why things happened in retrospect.

~~~
NateEag
Which can be restated as "Economic theories, on average, have little
predictive power."

I'm glad I took econ classes, but it is not a very practical discipline.

And, yes, I think it's a stretch to call it a science when you can't do
meaningful experiments.

I object to calling geology a science for the same reason.

~~~
CyberDildonics
I would probably agree, but saying something is difficult to test is not the
same as saying that many theories don't seem to be true in practice.

~~~
NateEag
Valid point.

------
throwaway29102
WTAF does this have to do with Haskell? Please consider a retitle to "Haskell
Developer Does Not Like Cryptocurrency."

------
lucas_membrane
An important aspect of life for many of us is the opportunity to be a moral
agent. Being a successful moral agent as part of a profession in the world I
know is not an easy goal to achieve. Diehl deserves kudos for posting this so
that young people planning a career can be aware of some possible pitfalls and
negative moral influences down the road when they include particular
technological skill sets in their long-term road-maps.

I'm generally not in a technological workplace as I once was, but my
recollection (from circa 1990) is that the ACM and the software section of the
IEEE each had codes of ethics for their members to consult when knotty
problems of good vs evil arose. Do current versions of those codes contain
anything that might assist a responsible professional addressing the issues
that Diehl describes?

------
tphyahoo2
[https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/whiny-
progra...](https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/whiny-programmer-
whines-about-bitcoin/)

"Well… then don’t buy bitcoin Stephen! Nobody is forcing you to hodl bitcoin.
Unlike all those people in argentina and tin pot places where you can’t freely
convert the currency, and it is jail time if you try.

I roll my emoji eyes…"

------
tlholaday
> The value of these assets is only determined by what other people are
> willing to pay for them.

According to William Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, and Carl Menger, the value
of every asset is only determined by what other people are willing to pay for
it. It seems a good match for cryptocurrencies.

------
leshow
Mentions FP Complete, who worked on cardano I think. So is the accusation that
cardano is running a shady exchange and stealing from people?

I don't follow the crypto space, but it seems like we might actually want to
know which companies are being accused of being shady.

~~~
sanxiyn
I don't think Cardano is running a shady exchange, but Cardano sure is traded
in shady exchanges and people are losing money trading Cardano. I don't think
that's a controversial statement.

~~~
cinntaile
People are losing money trading a lot of things, including but not limited to
stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies such as Cardano. I don't really see
the issue with that?

I'm guessing it's the shady exchanges. There are several exchanges that have
been around for a few years now, do you take issue with all of them or are you
thinking of a specific one?

------
cordite
Whoa, FP Complete is doing crypto? It never appeared to me like that. Is there
a citation?

~~~
sanxiyn
Sure they do. It really is a public secret. See
[https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/fp-complete-and-cardano-
bloc...](https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/fp-complete-and-cardano-blockchain-
audit-partnership/)

------
jriddle567
Printed money is also something based on perception and belief that it is
worth something

------
gwbas1c
This is one of the best "We're not thinking critically about cryptocurrency"
articles I've read.

What's more surprising is it didn't get flagged to death. Maybe because the
title isn't attracting attention?

------
exdsq
A response from one companies CEO which Stephen called out:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHo_EUyShOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHo_EUyShOg)

------
dade
Rebuttal by Founder of Cardano
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHo_EUyShOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHo_EUyShOg)

------
papmarcin
Haskell developer community should support the right projects
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-carbontrading-
repo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-carbontrading-report/value-
of-global-co2-markets-hit-record-144-billion-euros-in-2018-report-
idUSKCN1PA27H)

------
a_humean
Pot calling kettle black...

------
leotaku
As an outsider to both the Haskell and Crypto communities, I find it extremely
hard to properly verify any of these claims. For example, I was convinced that
Tweag was a highly reputable company. Would anyone here who is less invested
in not burning any bridges be willing to name just one "obviously shady"
crypto project using Haskell?

------
centimeter
Lazy and poorly-considered article. It conflates Bitcoiners with shitcoin
grifters like Cardano. It's also beyond stupid to purity-police the uses of a
programming language. There's no collective tradeoff we have to make here. It
doesn't cost me anything as a Haskell dev if someone is using it in some scam
somewhere.

~~~
tome
That's interesting. What's wrong with Cardano?

------
jcbrand
I found the description of the cryptocurrency-space as a religion well-written
and interesting.

Of course, comparisons such as that are relatively common and has been made
many times for the free software movement as well for example.

However, his criticisms of cryptocurrencies are quite off IMO.

> However cryptocurrency companies do not produce anything, instead they offer
> synthetic financial products which are marketing to the generic public as
> investments

MakerDAO is basically a decentralized lending facility (i.e. "banks") and
Compound is a decentralized money market.

These are actual financial products, they serve real purposes that can also be
found in the legacy financial system.

Cryptocurrency engineers are building an alternative, decentralized financial
system that cuts out middle men and allows anyone access to financial services
(such as accepting money from anywhere in the world, or being able to lend out
your capital) that were previously only available to select people.

In one month, July 2020, the Federal Reserve printed more money than the first
200 years of the existence of the USA.

There are serious problems with the legacy financial system, and it's good
that people are building systems in parallel.

~~~
wmf
Out of a thousand cryptocurrencies you found two that are not harmful;
congratulations. It's virtually impossible for people to discover the good
stuff without being radicalized by the bad stuff.

~~~
tuesdayrain
There are thousands of scam penny stocks as well. The number of programming
languages tainted after being used by them is 0.

------
nutellaandgo
"However cryptocurrency does not provide any technical answers to the
inefficiencies since its entire existence is purely predicated on the appeal
as a speculative investment first and not on its efficacy to transmit value."

Pure nonsense.

------
nathias
obnoxious grandstanding

------
dimitrios1
If you have ethical concerns with this, but still love FP, just come over to
OCaml. You get 80-90% of what you love about Haskell, and there is an
established industry in many sectors. Big players here like Ahrefs, Jane
Street, and, of course, Messanger and Facebook.

~~~
gmfawcett
Tezos uses Ocaml; doesn't the same argument apply? (I don't agree with the
argument, personally, and I'm a big fan of Ocaml... I just don't see how it
deserves an "ethical concern" exception here.)

~~~
wmf
The question would be what fraction of the OCaml community is paid by Tezos.
If it's over half you may have a problem.

~~~
dimitrios1
And the answer is, no where near half, maybe close to a couple percentage
points, if that.

------
ogre_magi
Haskelephant

------
josemaenzo
nocoiner

------
crb002
Does Haskell have a legible GC free subset that is an alternative to Rust? If
not, that is the elephant.

~~~
gmfawcett
I'm not sure you understand what "elephant in the room" means? The fact that
Haskell has a GC is not an uncomfortable truth that everyone avoids
discussing.

------
mlang23
[https://hackage.haskell.org/packages/top](https://hackage.haskell.org/packages/top)

------
weego
I feel like the only elephant in the room with Haskell is that Haskell people
are obsessed with jumping in on any other FP language and trying to turn it
into Haskell. Scala was/is awash with it, much to the detriment of the
community.

------
Kednicma
It's not just a Haskell problem, but I think that Haskellers would rather care
about stuff like cryptocurrency, which is obviously unctuous graft, rather
than fix the other social problems in their community, like sexism or overly-
strict versioning.

