For information rich applications (ie. B2B-ish), definitely ExtJS. Pretty steep learning curve since, unlike jQuery UI, you sorta have to take all of nothing. We use ExtJS everywhere where using data/information is more important than look-n-feel. Put together CoffeeScript (http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/) with ExtJS and you'll be in RIA dev heaven. Fast and very productive.
For applications where look-n-feel, customization, etc is more important (ie. B2C-ish or consumer internet), HTML/CSS/jQuery is the way to go.
IANAL but it seems as though a lawsuit would be filed pretty quickly if Apple blocked Adobe's interpreted apps and didn't block Rhomobile/Unity3D/MonoTouch interpreted apps. Seems fair to block possibly harmful technologies, not competitive competitors.
We all got pissed at Microsoft when they were giving themselves preferential treatment, but what if Microsoft had said "eeerrrrmmm, Wordperfect is no longer welcome on Windows, but AbiWord is okay".
Agreed that, in some senses, I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole, but the comments on my blog suggest that others share my experience and they're mostly from planet.haskell.org. So I think something is missed if my experience is entirely chalked up to ignorance.
My post was written fairly quickly and got more attention than I expected. Looking at it again and looking at Turbinado's code, I can see how you could suggest that I don't understand monads. And I probably don't understand them to your level, but the code reflects the result of trying to compose together a number of libraries into a sensible system. Wrapping those libraries in composed monad transformers was vastly more complicated than just dropping down to the IO monad, so I stripped down...
w.r.t monads: they're lovely for constraining code behavior and for building DSLs, so other languages have added monad libraries. They haven't forced the entire language to live within monads...
w.r.t incremental data structures: I mentioned in my post that I wasn't happy with multiple data types. Multiple constructors sound even less productive. Currying is a solid suggestion.
I don't disagree that the reasons are shallow, but it turns out that solving some problems in Haskell is just plain hard. It's precisely because the issues/reasons are basic that it's hard...
Also, I'm confused by your comment about the IO monad & logging... How would you log outside of the IO monad?
Would also be cool if you'd point me to your Haskell repo. I'd be curious to see how you solve these problems.
For applications where look-n-feel, customization, etc is more important (ie. B2C-ish or consumer internet), HTML/CSS/jQuery is the way to go.