The Haskell Interlude 68: Michael Snoyman
Aug 12, 2025
In this engaging conversation, Michael Snoyman, the creator of popular Haskell libraries like Yesod and Conduit, shares his journey from Haskell to Rust. He discusses the challenges of lazy IO and introduces Conduit as a better alternative for data handling. The importance of making programming languages like Haskell accessible for newcomers is a key theme. Snoyman also reflects on Haskell's legacy in modern programming, touching on type systems and the evolution of the Haskell ecosystem, including insights on performance in web development.
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How Haskell Hooked Him
- Michael Snoyman discovered Haskell via reading a Perl 6 implementation written in Haskell and was instantly captivated.
- He struggled early (especially with monad transformers) but returned and embraced Haskell for its features.
Solve Onboarding With Reliable Tooling
- Build tooling that removes onboarding obstacles so newcomers can run a project with a single command.
- Provide a reproducible build and resolver so people avoid long failed builds and give Haskell another chance.
Rust Stole Haskell's Best Ideas
- Rust succeeded by adopting many of Haskell's best ideas like ADTs and immutability by default.
- This convergence makes Haskellers comfortable using Rust while retaining functional instincts.
