Scarf has moved away from Haskell
A software company founder explains the decision to migrate their backend infrastructure away from Haskell after 16 years of use. While praising the language's reliability and type system, the author cites excessive compilation times and ecosystem friction as the primary drivers for the move.
Why it matters
It highlights the ongoing trade-offs between functional programming language benefits and the practical operational costs faced by modern startups.
This has been a hard post to write. I almost didn't write it at all, since I prefer to build and promote than to critique. However, I hope this post can add constructively to the discussion about Haskell’s future. I must underline that I'm not writing this criticizing Haskell from the outside. I care enough about Haskell to be honest about why Scarf has reluctantly moved away from it, in hopes it sways people in the community to take this feedback seriously.
The article is a personal technical retrospective focused on engineering trade-offs without political or ideological framing.
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