[Nix-dev] Use Haskell for Shell Scripting

[Ertugrul Söylemez]

>> To be fair, there is also the GNU OS, which uses Guix, although the
>> underlying ideas and build system (nix-daemon) are the same.
>
> [...] As such, it's probably best for me to not talk about GNU
> OS, Guix, and Guile until I get the time/willpower to explain why my
> viewpoint against that project is not malicious and why NixOS is –
> perhaps counterintuitively to some libre software supporters – more
> beneficial to the software freedom movement.

Do yourself a favour by not getting into that kind of argument.  They
see benefit in their way of doing things, and I would strongly support
their project.  Both GNU OS and NixOS are heading into a much better
direction than pretty much all other distributions in my personal view,
and I would happily encourage them to carry on.

At some point in time we will benefit from each other, and in fact I see
a huge benefit even for NixOS in the sole existence of GNU OS, if only
to have some GNU people following the functional distribution approach.
If nothing else the fact that two projects happily follow the same idea
may well indicate to some people that we're on the right track.  "We" as
in "the GNU OS and NixOS people."

In short:  Better stop arguing against them, regardless of what your
reasons are.  The only thing you can gain by that is a week of heated
flamewars with no conclusion other than that they will think that NixOS
people are jerks.  I'd prefer us to work together instead of against
each other.


>     Nevertheless, I still think that human interface choice is
> important, and XMonad is an example of the original point that I was
> trying to get at. It is a classic user interface, a tiling window
> manager, using a pure-functional language. Just because something is
> written using modern techniques doesn't mean to say that the user
> interface itself is ‘modern’.

I use the same combination (xmonad + taffybar) and could complain all
day long about it.  Of course this is constructive criticism, and I'm an
idealist to some extent, but still there is a lot of room for
improvement.

For example xmonad is too rigid.  It has a fixed data structure that
corresponds directly to what is displayed on each screen.  Workspace
names are strings, which is hugely inconvenient.  Something like
tag-based volatile workspaces are not possible, although with some
really ugly (and slow) hacks you could do it.

In the ideal graphical environment I wouldn't see any reason to close or
move a single window -- ever.  Xmonad gets closer, but is still far
away.


> ‘multiparadigm’ is ambiguous as to what multiple paradigms that refers
> to, but I clarified that by saying “functional/imperative”.

I did mean that Haskell supports imperative programming just as well as
it does support declarative programming.  Some people say that it's the
best imperative language out there.
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