{"slug": "after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell", "title": "After 7 years in production, Scarf has reluctantly moved away from Haskell", "summary": "Scarf, a cash-flow-positive software company, is moving away from Haskell after seven years of production use, citing slow feedback loops and development costs. The company will retain Haskell for its performance-critical Scarf Gateway but switch to Python for general-purpose web APIs, partly to leverage AI capabilities. The decision has sparked debate in the Haskell community about AI ethics and language trade-offs.", "body_md": "[avi](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/avi)\n1\nWith sadness, I post:\n\nThoughts and discussion welcome.\n\n4 Likes\n\nThanks for posting your thoughts.\n\nI wonder whether using GHCi is an answer to the slow feedback loop?\n\nIf Python is a viable alternative then I imagine runtime performance isn’t the biggest concern?\n\nDo you or the Scarf board or investors have big stakes in AI? jw\n\nglhf with the AI python experiment! hf seems like the hard part, but you’re a Business so you can wipe those tears with your increased LoC\n\n[jaror](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/jaror)\n4\nI don’t feel like you take our concerns about the harm of AI seriously at all. The post is basically seems to be saying “so long, and thanks for all the fish”, but if the dolphins were the ones paying for the hyperspace bypass and thus the demolition of earth. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.\n\n3 Likes\n\n[Jappie](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/Jappie)\n5\nWhat a nice natural experiment, I’m eager to learn the results.\n\nthat’s kind of AI in a nutshell, right? Explore and gobble up the sum total of human thought and labor and then go terminally Exploit\n\nand tbh “X is leaving Haskell” in a nutshell too.\n\nthe world is especially full of FUD and FOMO nowadays. doubly so if you work at a company adjacent to the SV zeitgeist. so to be a Haskeller who still codes in plaintext is not easy. it’s existentially stressful, even!\n\n*it takes guts to be amazing*\n\n1 Like\n\n[avi](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/avi)\n7\nThis is a great point. We are notably *not* moving Scarf Gateway (our main performance-critical system) off Haskell. Python indeed would not be a good fit there.\n\nHowever, for general purpose web APIs, runtime performance of the language has not been nearly as relevant for us, compared to things like DB performance. I think this is true for a lot of companies.\n\nGHCI is certainly faster, But it still doesn’t remove this cost when you look at things like CI or doing a lot of parallel work.\n\n[avi](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/avi)\n8\nNope. Scarf is cash flow positive and default-alive now. We are making the choices that work best for us!\n\n[avi](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/avi)\n9\nFair point – I think these concerns are understandable. And I am not trying to refute them! I am ultimately more focused here on the pragmatism of our team’s technology choices than I am about making moral judgements about the people, orgs, and practices behind those technologies.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell", "canonical_source": "https://discourse.haskell.org/t/after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell/14380#post_9", "published_at": "2026-07-10 14:28:46+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10 14:36:54.010556+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Scarf", "Haskell", "Python", "GHCi"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-7-years-in-production-scarf-has-reluctantly-moved-away-from-haskell.jsonld"}}