[Blog](/blog-category/blog/) May 7, 2024 # Why Haskell is a Terrible Choice for Startups (and why we picked it anyway) Here are some observations about using Haskell in production at a small startup with a high-traffic system. This is a list based on Avi Press' original talk at Scale by the Bay 2023. By Ida Bzo ![Why Haskell is a Terrible Choice for Startups (and why we picked it anyway)](/imported/social-og/cab8861ca20e7036-9e9522a3.png) _Here are some observations about using Haskell in production at a small startup with a high-traffic system. This is a list based on Avi Press’_ [_original talk_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw4S_6FXsp4&feature=youtu.be) _at Scale by the Bay 2023._ 1\. Haskell is both good and bad for hiring. It works well in that you will get high-quality, enthusiastic applicants. It’s bad in that your hiring pool is **very** small and spread across the globe. 2\. You will run into missing and incomplete libraries with Haskell, and in a startup environment, this will slow you down and dictate your other technology choices more than you will want.  3\. Batteries-included web frameworks are a massive win for early-stage products, and we still have a long way to go towards getting to something like Rails/Django/etc. We’re all rooting for IHP from [@digitallyinduce](https://twitter.com/digitallyinduce). Don’t fool yourself into thinking this doesn’t matter. 4\. You will need to put substantial effort into optimizing your build times, and it will require discipline to keep your builds fast. Like everything above, this slows you down from work that actually matters to your customers. 5\. Dependency upgrades will be painful. 6\. Haskell is great for type safety, but good type safety is still a lot of work, so in practice your types are often a lie. 7\. For _most_ new businesses, correctness is not nearly as important as we Haskellers may like to think. It’s probably not a good thing to optimize for early on. You will probably change your product significantly in the early days. 8\. We need more standards for how to write Haskell. Every time your engineering team discusses MTL vs free monads vs effect systems, you are wasting very precious time. 9\. Haskell in practice means dealing with a bit more accidental complexity than other languages, especially as you’re getting started. 10\. Haskell is world-class for helping you be agile, and confidently refactor as you figure out your business and requirements change. This is a huge win. 11\. Auto generation of documentation just from your types is amazing, especially early on when you probably aren’t writing too many docs. 12\. Haskell is very fun. Startups are an absolutely insane amount of work, and if you can make your development more pleasant, that is not to be underestimated. ![Supporting image 1 for Why We Picked Haskell at Scarf](/imported/posts/f48bdee8f54bd5c7.png) For more context on this topic, watch Avi Press’ [original talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw4S_6FXsp4&feature=youtu.be) at Scale by the Bay 2023. Related Resources [![](/imported/posts/open-source-ai-index-og.png) Blog Aug 11, 2026 ### Ollama Ahead of Azure? A New Leaderboard for Open Source AI Adoption What Scarf's package data tells us about a fast-moving market. ](/post/a-new-index-for-tracking-open-source-ai/)[![](/imported/posts/company-unlocks-value-og.png) Blog Jun 8, 2026 ### Getting the Most Out of Your Company Unlock Credits Company unlocks are most useful when you filter, size, sort, and schedule them around the organizations you actually care about. ](/post/how-to-maximize-the-value-of-your-company-unlocks/)[![](/imported/posts/maven-central-publishers-scarf-thumbnail.png) Blog Jun 4, 2026 ### What 3,600+ Maven Central publishers do after claiming their namespace on Scarf Scarf has now onboarded 3,693 open source organizations from Maven Central as part of our partnership with Sonatype. We now have a meaningful signal on how these teams are leveraging Scarf most effectively. ](/post/what-3600-maven-central-publishers-do-after-claiming-their-namespace-on-scarf/) Article Notes [**Browse all resources** Search, categories, and latest Scarf writing. ](/resources)[**See pricing** Understand how Scarf packages its offering. ](/pricing)