15 ms·

New haskell-lang.org

124 points by Rabble_Of_One 10y ago

the_duke 10y ago
Why on earth would they launch a new subreddit when there is https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/ with 20k+ subscribers?
- twoquestions 10y ago
  Avoid success at all costs?
- burkaman 10y ago
  Hopefully it's just meant to be for discussing the website itself.
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    Seems to be: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hpcaballess_wwwhaskellorg_in_the_works/d2jhwm6 https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hp...
- Rabble_Of_One 10y ago
  Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars. We need a clean break. A new subreddit provides a fresh start allowing to mold a new community based on better principles. Everyone who wants to be part of the new community is invited to join the new Haskell movement. Troublemaker will hopefully stay behind
  - jerf 10y ago
    "Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars." Are we talking about different /r/haskells here? I'm not seeing it. "Disagreement" is not "a flamewar". Wouldn't even call it "constant disagreement", either. Do you have an example "flamewar" you can show us?
    - snaky 10y ago
      > "Disagreement" is not "a flamewar" It's worse these days. "We need a safe zones!"
  - thu 10y ago
    > a new community based on better principles Like stating the "old" community is based on worse principles ?
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    >Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars No, it most certainly has not. >Troublemaker will hopefully stay behind Three of the people involved in this would be lumped into the "troublemaker" group in any objective measure.
    - gelisam 10y ago
      What? Apart from Sibi Prabakaran who I've never heard of (maybe I only know them by their handle?), everybody else in the list is a high profile, highly-respected member of the community. As far as I can tell from being on /r/haskell during the whole day every day. What kind of trouble did they cause?
      - emptyset 10y ago
        There used to be a time when blog posts were written about how toxic the Haskell community is to beginners by people who had encountered abusive behaviour from Chris Allen whilst trying to learn. He had a long history of such behaviour on Twitter.
      - MustardTiger 10y ago
        The arguments being characterized as "flamewars" almost exclusively involve Snoyman, and often include others of the FP complete "take over haskell" task force listed.
  - axman6 10y ago
    Are we reading the same r/Haskell? I've never seen anything more than minor disagreements - any trolling gets down voted into oblivion, beginner questions are always answered constructively with usually more information than was originally requested. I usually head straight to the comments, often before reading the articles to see what additional information has been added to the conversation. I note that several of the names in the announcement are often front and centre of anything that could be flamewars - the rest of the community is very civil. This is really disappointing to see this sort of public division in the community, with as far as I can see no good reason.
  - codygman 10y ago
    > Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars. I visit there every day and I have no idea what flame wars you are talking about.
    - Rabble_Of_One 10y ago
      For starters just recently FP Complete open-sourced a new cool high-performance serialization library. Then a few people started giving Michael shit for no reason. See https://www.reddit.com/user/snoyberg?after=t1_d3ncybv https://www.reddit.com/user/snoyberg?after=t1_d3ncybv
      - gmfawcett 10y ago
        Are you talking about the "store" discussion? Michael seems to have brought some of that upon himself. He entered that discussion in a fairly abrasive way [1], and based on his replies, he didn't seem very motivated to foster a more positive discussion (or to just walk away from the trolls). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new_and_efficient_binary_serialization/d3kb0ig https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new...
      - MustardTiger 10y ago
        Are you mgsloan on reddit? Nobody said anything about snoyberg at all until he showed up and started shitting on everyone like usual. All I said was that FP complete is setting a bad example by actively refusing to follow established community guidelines (PvP).
        realmgsloan 10y ago
        No, it isn't. I don't use HN much, just taking a look at this conversation. I shouldn't even respond to this comment considering its tone. You should keep in mind that this was in discussion of a new serialization library, not the PVP. I actually had to create this new account because I forgot my password and my old account (probably mgsloan) doesn't have an email address associated. > All I said was that FP complete is setting a bad example by actively refusing to follow established community guidelines (PvP). We do follow the important parts of the PvP. Personally, I consider the 3rd section of the PvP a failed experiment. It just doesn't work well, and the maintainer / hackage trustee overhead is too damn high. My theory is that the folks who are adamant about the PvP are either damn tenacious and dedicated (hvr, dcoutts, etc), or people who don't deal with projects with many dependencies and custom packages. So, yes, we are willing to dump tradition when the tradition is nonsense. I think that Haskellers ought to understand this very well - tradition should be questioned - particularly when it is a major pain point. When there is great value in doing so, we are questioning some traditions and doing our own thing. This attitude appears to be ruffling the feathers of the vocal minority.
  - coolsunglasses 10y ago
    Why are you using a name like one I'm known for using? People think you're me.
    - zxexz 10y ago
      I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure that one out. Thanks for clearing that up here and on Reddit that Rabble_of_one isn't /u/Mob_of_one on Reddit. Also thanks for learnhaskell! It helped me a lot when I was first learning :)
  - seagreen 10y ago
    The new subreddit is not for general haskell discussion, it's only for the discussion of things related to the haskell-lang.org site. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hpcaballess_wwwhaskellorg_in_the_works/d2jhwm6 https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hp... Note that the community page on haskell-lang.org still links to /r/haskell: https://haskell-lang.org/community https://haskell-lang.org/community I understand why this is confusing though, since the HN link goes to an annoucements page which mentions the new subreddit prominently), but the homepage for haskell-lang.org does not.
- timjver 10y ago
  Interestingly, the Community page has a link to /r/haskell instead of /r/haskell_lang.
- erichdongubler 10y ago
  Reddit thread related to this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rug4n/why_a_new_subreddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rug4n/why_a_...
- Buttons840 10y ago
  The top moderator of the new subreddit (/r/haskell_lang) has said the new subreddit is for discussing the new haskell-lang.org website, it is not intended for general Haskell discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_this_the_official_haskell_subreddit_or_is/d54cpja https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_thi...
  - the_duke 10y ago
    Alright, that makes sense then. I just assumed it was intended to be about Haskell in general, since the first post was "Young developers like Discourse and Slack, not IRC", not very website specific. Maybe haskell_lang_org would have been a clearer name.
    - Buttons840 10y ago
      I agree that the name is confusing.
thu 10y ago
I still don't understand why new subreddit or IRC channel are necessary. They could be used strictly to talk about the new site, but it seems they will be targeted to all things Haskell, exactly like the existing places. Otherwise I'm all for some form of competition and moving things forwards, so props for the initiative.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  Seriously. And frankly, haskell-lang.org looks a lot like haskell.org
  - thu 10y ago
    This is the same design. And the person who donated it to haskell.org asked them to stop using it[0] [0] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-community/2016-April/000100.html https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-community/2016-Ap...
  - Rabble_Of_One 10y ago
    First impressions can deceive It may appear so because haskell-lang started off haskell.org's content. You can look at http://github.com/haskell-lang/haskell-lang/commits/master http://github.com/haskell-lang/haskell-lang/commits/master to see the work that went into evolving haskell-lang away from haskell.org
setra 10y ago
Quote: Why a new site? Since it is a common question in such statements, let us ask it directly here: why create a new website instead of working to incrementally update haskell.org? In the opinion of the team behind haskell-lang.org, the tooling story and general ecosystem infrastructure for the Haskell community has accumulated enough baggage that a clean break is the best use of everybody's time. We intend to streamline the on-boarding process for new developers, move away from infrastructure that is showing its age, and embrace newer approaches to facilitate open collaboration. Similar decisions have already been made in creating the Stack build tool and Stackage.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  On-board them to Haskell or FP Complete?
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    Exactly. At this point I really wish the FP complete people would just fork GHC and get it over with. They've been such a huge problem in the haskell community, just divide it up already.
    - tinco 10y ago
      A huge problem? Could you give an example of the sort of problem they are causing? Maybe I am out of the loop but from my perspective as a hobby coder FP complete (particularly snoyberg) has done nothing but put out extremely useful code. Most notable of which stack which is (going to be) the defacto standard for deploying Haskell applications.
      - grp 10y ago
        Producing really good code doesn't give you the right to claim property of the userland (sort of). For me, it's a huge problem. Imagine if each companies (using haskell commercially) start to act like that...
thu 10y ago
The link to the CHG (which I confused with IHG) is using HTTPS but it seems the redirect to GitHub works only in HTTP. I'm not sure what stating CHG sponsors the new site means.
- sclv 10y ago
  I have no idea either. The new site was never discussed once on the list ( https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commercialhaskell https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commercialhaskell ) nor does there seem to be anything in the CHG charter that would let it as a group do anything at all, such as making a collective decision to sponsor a site.
fumplethumb 10y ago
Good to see that the Haskell community is looking for ways to be more accessible to newcomers. I'm not very familiar with Haskell, but I have long heard that the Haskell community wasn't interested in popularity. Has there been a shift in their thinking?
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  The Haskell motto is "avoid success at all costs", usually clarified to "avoid 'success at all costs'". In other words, "success" (popularity, widespread use in industry, teaching, etc.) is not a justification for "costs" such as limiting expressiveness, making things less safe, restricting research possibilities, etc. Haskell would prefer to be powerful, safe, efficient, obscure and niche; rather than popular, industry-standard, widely-known, highly compatible, unsafe, insecure, inefficient and restricted (besides, we have loads of languages of this sort!). Crippling the language to make things easier for new users is not an option. However, there are many ways the language could be made easier without impacting any core values. For example, there are long-standing issues with strings, records, error messages, dependency handling, etc. which people are working on. Also, for those who do want to learn Haskell, I've found the community to be very welcoming and tolerant of newbies. Just ignore some of the more math-heavy blog posts (for now, at least), or your head might explode :P
  - fumplethumb 10y ago
    Thanks for the reply! I've heard that motto before and didn't understand it until now. Makes perfect sense. To your point about making Haskell easier for newbies without impacting the core values... Rust is a great example of that. Rust can be difficult to learn, but the Rust community does a great job of explaining (and re-explaining in many cases) Rust's approach to newcomers. This is especially true when Rust handles a problem in a way that may be counter-intuitive to the inexperienced. Here's a great example from r/Rust where a new Rust user trashes traits and the Result type: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4rev26/why_is_rust_making_things_so_hard/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4rev26/why_is_rust_ma...
    - 10y ago
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
I understand you desire a clean break, but personally I find it rather user-hostile to fragment all of your resources so easily.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
Wow, this is awful. It seems like there are a lot of immature people on both sides of this nonsense. If any of them are reading this: you're making your ecosystem look bad. Settle your differences privately and present a unified front.
- dudul 10y ago
  Are you aware of any "heated debate" at the root of this new website? The post doesn't seem to convey this idea.
  - grp 10y ago
    We encourage all Haskellers to join, and to take part in lively discussions of how to improve the state of the art within Haskell. I read it like there should be a problem to solve, but english isn't my mother tongue.
    - dudul 10y ago
      It's not mine either, but I don't read it like that. It makes sense that they would encourage people to get involved. I mostly see mentions of aging tools which, I believe, is true (I'm not a hardcore practitioner, just a curious Haskeller on my spare time). I guess I'd like to see more in details what they are planning to do.
      - grp 10y ago
        I hope the first one will be: solving the gui state!
    - lovich 10y ago
      English is my mother tongue, and this just reads like an invitation to the community. "Lively discussions" is sometimes a euphemism for a heated debate but I didnt get that feeling from this
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    I haven't really followed it that much, but there absolutely is a debate, and at least some of the people involved are feeling some real acrimony. Here's snoyberg, one of the people behind the new website: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new_and_efficient_binary_serialization/d3nb10l https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new...
ezyang 10y ago
Well, at least one motivation for launching a new site is so that https://haskell-lang.org/get-started https://haskell-lang.org/get-started is a much more streamlined way to onboard users than the existing https://www.haskell.org/downloads https://www.haskell.org/downloads Unfortunately, the presentation of how to start new users is somewhat political because there is disagreement if new users should just get stated on Stack, or see all of the options.
- ch 10y ago
  Why does the "complete list of packages" link to here (https://www.stackage.org/lts https://www.stackage.org/lts) instead of hackage? Is there a general consensus to move beyond hackage? I thought your work on backpack was still ongoing and bridging the usability gap between cabal and stack, no?
  - ezyang 10y ago
    Well, if you are a user using Stack, packages which are not in the LTS have to be added manually. So in a Stack universe, treating LTS as the universe of packages is not unreasonable. I don't think either Stack users or Cabal users think Hackage should go away; in particular if you're a library author, the way into the LTS is to publish something to Hackage and then ask Stackage to take it. As for Backpack, it doesn't really have much to do with the philosophy difference between Cabal and Stack. But I have, as necessary refactoring for implementing Backpack, been working on improving cabal-install, including the Nix-local builds feature which is supposed to make Cabal's usability story much better.
- jerf 10y ago
  A new website I understand. If one wants a radically different model of community participation than what the standard haskell site presents, by far the best and easiest thing for everybody is to just do it, and see what happens. The original can conservatively hang around, the new one can be trialed, if the new one is successful perhaps the original adapts or is even replaced. (IIRC, the maintainers of haskell.org have stated they don't have a lot of time to advance the backend and make significant changes.) That all makes sense to me. It's the rest of the fragmentation that doesn't.
ihuman 10y ago
Why are there two Haskell websites (haskell-lang.org and haskell.org)?
- massysett 10y ago
  You think that's confusing? The old home page led straight to a wiki, which is still up: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell
  - ihuman 10y ago
    Which one is the official website and endorsed by the writers of the language/compiler?
    - massysett 10y ago
      I think it's fair to say that haskell.org is the "official" website that has the involvement and implicit backing of the old-timers. Also the GHC compiler is hosted on haskell.org. haskell-lang.org is the upstart. Whether it will last is an open question.
    - thu 10y ago
      I wouldn't say the "writers" are endorsing the old website, or not endorsing the new one, but whois is pretty telling: $ whois haskell-lang.org | grep ' Name:' Domain Name: HASKELL-LANG.ORG Registrant Name: FP Complete Corporation Admin Name: FP Complete Corporation Tech Name: FP Complete Corporation $ whois haskell.org | grep ' Name:' Domain Name: HASKELL.ORG Registrant Name: YaleUniversityComputer Science Department Haskell Group Admin Name: Galois Hostmaster Tech Name: Galois Hostmaster
    - sclv 10y ago
      The official website of the compiler itself is here: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ https://www.haskell.org/ghc/
hguant 10y ago
I guess I don't understand the need for a new IRC channel. #haskell is one of the best out there, both as a resource and a community. Why split it up?
- zxexz 10y ago
  I got the impression on #haskell-lang that the current occupants think the channel is about the new website. But with a channel name like that it definitely sounds like a channel devoted to Haskell discussion...and thus may become one. We already have #haskell, #haskell-overflow (sometimes even #haskell-overflow-overflow :P) and #haskell-beginners. I don't think there's a need for further IRC channels for language discussion. The current Haskell IRC community is beautiful and the least toxic and splintered of any I've ever been to.
wyager 10y ago
Why? How does this improve over the old one? I'm certainly not going to change IRC channels or subreddits.
riscy 10y ago
This seems like a community leadership coup to get people to use a different package management system, Stack.
cm3 10y ago
FWIW, I've tried to use stack twice and came back to cabal-install. There's also that I enable split-objects in ~/.cabal/config (not available in Stack) and often use GHC on platforms where there's no Stack-provided GHC available. That said, avoiding the compatibility problem of dependencies via curated package sets (Stackage) is a nice idea. However, Duncan's nix-local-build work makes the problems void from what I can tell, and Ed's Backpack work will improve the situation even more. Though, curated sets are still a nice idea regardless. I'm not a Haskell greybeard, just a light user, but despite the improvements via FPComplete's output, at least some of it feels NIH and unnecessarily polarizes the community. For instance, reusing Shake in Cabal(-install) and getting nix-local-build and Backpack production ready look like improvements that will be beneficial for a longer time, rather than splitting the community with a different build/package structure (stack). I mean, dividing the already small Haskell community doesn't make sense to me. If Gershom doesn't play fair with the management of www.haskell.org, this should be raised officially and fixed, because haskell.org is not a one man project and there's a team around it.
- ezyang 10y ago
  Credit where credit is due: nix-local-build is mostly Duncan Coutts work (I just wrote the announcement, and contributed some patches!)
  - cm3 10y ago
    Thanks for the correction, fixed.
  - massysett 10y ago
    Links to nix-local-build please? Is this the same as cabal new-build?
    - cm3 10y ago
      It's the same: http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build-nix-style-local-builds/ http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build-ni...

124 points by Rabble_Of_One 10y ago

Why on earth would they launch a new subreddit when there is https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/ with 20k+ subscribers?

twoquestions 10y ago
Avoid success at all costs?
burkaman 10y ago
Hopefully it's just meant to be for discussing the website itself.
- hyperpape 10y ago
  Seems to be: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hpcaballess_wwwhaskellorg_in_the_works/d2jhwm6 https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hp...
Rabble_Of_One 10y ago
Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars. We need a clean break. A new subreddit provides a fresh start allowing to mold a new community based on better principles. Everyone who wants to be part of the new community is invited to join the new Haskell movement. Troublemaker will hopefully stay behind
- jerf 10y ago
  "Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars." Are we talking about different /r/haskells here? I'm not seeing it. "Disagreement" is not "a flamewar". Wouldn't even call it "constant disagreement", either. Do you have an example "flamewar" you can show us?
  - snaky 10y ago
    > "Disagreement" is not "a flamewar" It's worse these days. "We need a safe zones!"
- thu 10y ago
  > a new community based on better principles Like stating the "old" community is based on worse principles ?
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  >Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars No, it most certainly has not. >Troublemaker will hopefully stay behind Three of the people involved in this would be lumped into the "troublemaker" group in any objective measure.
  - gelisam 10y ago
    What? Apart from Sibi Prabakaran who I've never heard of (maybe I only know them by their handle?), everybody else in the list is a high profile, highly-respected member of the community. As far as I can tell from being on /r/haskell during the whole day every day. What kind of trouble did they cause?
    - emptyset 10y ago
      There used to be a time when blog posts were written about how toxic the Haskell community is to beginners by people who had encountered abusive behaviour from Chris Allen whilst trying to learn. He had a long history of such behaviour on Twitter.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      The arguments being characterized as "flamewars" almost exclusively involve Snoyman, and often include others of the FP complete "take over haskell" task force listed.
- axman6 10y ago
  Are we reading the same r/Haskell? I've never seen anything more than minor disagreements - any trolling gets down voted into oblivion, beginner questions are always answered constructively with usually more information than was originally requested. I usually head straight to the comments, often before reading the articles to see what additional information has been added to the conversation. I note that several of the names in the announcement are often front and centre of anything that could be flamewars - the rest of the community is very civil. This is really disappointing to see this sort of public division in the community, with as far as I can see no good reason.
- codygman 10y ago
  > Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars. I visit there every day and I have no idea what flame wars you are talking about.
  - Rabble_Of_One 10y ago
    For starters just recently FP Complete open-sourced a new cool high-performance serialization library. Then a few people started giving Michael shit for no reason. See https://www.reddit.com/user/snoyberg?after=t1_d3ncybv https://www.reddit.com/user/snoyberg?after=t1_d3ncybv
    - gmfawcett 10y ago
      Are you talking about the "store" discussion? Michael seems to have brought some of that upon himself. He entered that discussion in a fairly abrasive way [1], and based on his replies, he didn't seem very motivated to foster a more positive discussion (or to just walk away from the trolls). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new_and_efficient_binary_serialization/d3kb0ig https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new...
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      Are you mgsloan on reddit? Nobody said anything about snoyberg at all until he showed up and started shitting on everyone like usual. All I said was that FP complete is setting a bad example by actively refusing to follow established community guidelines (PvP).
      - realmgsloan 10y ago
        No, it isn't. I don't use HN much, just taking a look at this conversation. I shouldn't even respond to this comment considering its tone. You should keep in mind that this was in discussion of a new serialization library, not the PVP. I actually had to create this new account because I forgot my password and my old account (probably mgsloan) doesn't have an email address associated. > All I said was that FP complete is setting a bad example by actively refusing to follow established community guidelines (PvP). We do follow the important parts of the PvP. Personally, I consider the 3rd section of the PvP a failed experiment. It just doesn't work well, and the maintainer / hackage trustee overhead is too damn high. My theory is that the folks who are adamant about the PvP are either damn tenacious and dedicated (hvr, dcoutts, etc), or people who don't deal with projects with many dependencies and custom packages. So, yes, we are willing to dump tradition when the tradition is nonsense. I think that Haskellers ought to understand this very well - tradition should be questioned - particularly when it is a major pain point. When there is great value in doing so, we are questioning some traditions and doing our own thing. This attitude appears to be ruffling the feathers of the vocal minority.
- coolsunglasses 10y ago
  Why are you using a name like one I'm known for using? People think you're me.
  - zxexz 10y ago
    I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure that one out. Thanks for clearing that up here and on Reddit that Rabble_of_one isn't /u/Mob_of_one on Reddit. Also thanks for learnhaskell! It helped me a lot when I was first learning :)
- seagreen 10y ago
  The new subreddit is not for general haskell discussion, it's only for the discussion of things related to the haskell-lang.org site. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hpcaballess_wwwhaskellorg_in_the_works/d2jhwm6 https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4ghznv/improved_hp... Note that the community page on haskell-lang.org still links to /r/haskell: https://haskell-lang.org/community https://haskell-lang.org/community I understand why this is confusing though, since the HN link goes to an annoucements page which mentions the new subreddit prominently), but the homepage for haskell-lang.org does not.
timjver 10y ago
Interestingly, the Community page has a link to /r/haskell instead of /r/haskell_lang.
erichdongubler 10y ago
Reddit thread related to this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rug4n/why_a_new_subreddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rug4n/why_a_...
Buttons840 10y ago
The top moderator of the new subreddit (/r/haskell_lang) has said the new subreddit is for discussing the new haskell-lang.org website, it is not intended for general Haskell discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_this_the_official_haskell_subreddit_or_is/d54cpja https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_thi...
- the_duke 10y ago
  Alright, that makes sense then. I just assumed it was intended to be about Haskell in general, since the first post was "Young developers like Discourse and Slack, not IRC", not very website specific. Maybe haskell_lang_org would have been a clearer name.
  - Buttons840 10y ago
    I agree that the name is confusing.

thu 10y ago

I still don't understand why new subreddit or IRC channel are necessary. They could be used strictly to talk about the new site, but it seems they will be targeted to all things Haskell, exactly like the existing places. Otherwise I'm all for some form of competition and moving things forwards, so props for the initiative.

lallysingh 10y ago
Seriously. And frankly, haskell-lang.org looks a lot like haskell.org
- thu 10y ago
  This is the same design. And the person who donated it to haskell.org asked them to stop using it[0] [0] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-community/2016-April/000100.html https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-community/2016-Ap...
- Rabble_Of_One 10y ago
  First impressions can deceive It may appear so because haskell-lang started off haskell.org's content. You can look at http://github.com/haskell-lang/haskell-lang/commits/master http://github.com/haskell-lang/haskell-lang/commits/master to see the work that went into evolving haskell-lang away from haskell.org

setra 10y ago

Quote: Why a new site? Since it is a common question in such statements, let us ask it directly here: why create a new website instead of working to incrementally update haskell.org? In the opinion of the team behind haskell-lang.org, the tooling story and general ecosystem infrastructure for the Haskell community has accumulated enough baggage that a clean break is the best use of everybody's time. We intend to streamline the on-boarding process for new developers, move away from infrastructure that is showing its age, and embrace newer approaches to facilitate open collaboration. Similar decisions have already been made in creating the Stack build tool and Stackage.

lallysingh 10y ago
On-board them to Haskell or FP Complete?
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  Exactly. At this point I really wish the FP complete people would just fork GHC and get it over with. They've been such a huge problem in the haskell community, just divide it up already.
  - tinco 10y ago
    A huge problem? Could you give an example of the sort of problem they are causing? Maybe I am out of the loop but from my perspective as a hobby coder FP complete (particularly snoyberg) has done nothing but put out extremely useful code. Most notable of which stack which is (going to be) the defacto standard for deploying Haskell applications.
    - grp 10y ago
      Producing really good code doesn't give you the right to claim property of the userland (sort of). For me, it's a huge problem. Imagine if each companies (using haskell commercially) start to act like that...

thu 10y ago

The link to the CHG (which I confused with IHG) is using HTTPS but it seems the redirect to GitHub works only in HTTP. I'm not sure what stating CHG sponsors the new site means.

sclv 10y ago
I have no idea either. The new site was never discussed once on the list ( https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commercialhaskell https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commercialhaskell ) nor does there seem to be anything in the CHG charter that would let it as a group do anything at all, such as making a collective decision to sponsor a site.

fumplethumb 10y ago

Good to see that the Haskell community is looking for ways to be more accessible to newcomers. I'm not very familiar with Haskell, but I have long heard that the Haskell community wasn't interested in popularity. Has there been a shift in their thinking?

chriswarbo 10y ago
The Haskell motto is "avoid success at all costs", usually clarified to "avoid 'success at all costs'". In other words, "success" (popularity, widespread use in industry, teaching, etc.) is not a justification for "costs" such as limiting expressiveness, making things less safe, restricting research possibilities, etc. Haskell would prefer to be powerful, safe, efficient, obscure and niche; rather than popular, industry-standard, widely-known, highly compatible, unsafe, insecure, inefficient and restricted (besides, we have loads of languages of this sort!). Crippling the language to make things easier for new users is not an option. However, there are many ways the language could be made easier without impacting any core values. For example, there are long-standing issues with strings, records, error messages, dependency handling, etc. which people are working on. Also, for those who do want to learn Haskell, I've found the community to be very welcoming and tolerant of newbies. Just ignore some of the more math-heavy blog posts (for now, at least), or your head might explode :P
- fumplethumb 10y ago
  Thanks for the reply! I've heard that motto before and didn't understand it until now. Makes perfect sense. To your point about making Haskell easier for newbies without impacting the core values... Rust is a great example of that. Rust can be difficult to learn, but the Rust community does a great job of explaining (and re-explaining in many cases) Rust's approach to newcomers. This is especially true when Rust handles a problem in a way that may be counter-intuitive to the inexperienced. Here's a great example from r/Rust where a new Rust user trashes traits and the Result type: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4rev26/why_is_rust_making_things_so_hard/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4rev26/why_is_rust_ma...
  - 10y ago

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

I understand you desire a clean break, but personally I find it rather user-hostile to fragment all of your resources so easily.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

Wow, this is awful. It seems like there are a lot of immature people on both sides of this nonsense. If any of them are reading this: you're making your ecosystem look bad. Settle your differences privately and present a unified front.

dudul 10y ago
Are you aware of any "heated debate" at the root of this new website? The post doesn't seem to convey this idea.
- grp 10y ago
  We encourage all Haskellers to join, and to take part in lively discussions of how to improve the state of the art within Haskell. I read it like there should be a problem to solve, but english isn't my mother tongue.
  - dudul 10y ago
    It's not mine either, but I don't read it like that. It makes sense that they would encourage people to get involved. I mostly see mentions of aging tools which, I believe, is true (I'm not a hardcore practitioner, just a curious Haskeller on my spare time). I guess I'd like to see more in details what they are planning to do.
    - grp 10y ago
      I hope the first one will be: solving the gui state!
  - lovich 10y ago
    English is my mother tongue, and this just reads like an invitation to the community. "Lively discussions" is sometimes a euphemism for a heated debate but I didnt get that feeling from this
- hyperpape 10y ago
  I haven't really followed it that much, but there absolutely is a debate, and at least some of the people involved are feeling some real acrimony. Here's snoyberg, one of the people behind the new website: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new_and_efficient_binary_serialization/d3nb10l https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/4l3y9f/store_a_new...

ezyang 10y ago

Well, at least one motivation for launching a new site is so that https://haskell-lang.org/get-started https://haskell-lang.org/get-started is a much more streamlined way to onboard users than the existing https://www.haskell.org/downloads https://www.haskell.org/downloads Unfortunately, the presentation of how to start new users is somewhat political because there is disagreement if new users should just get stated on Stack, or see all of the options.

ch 10y ago
Why does the "complete list of packages" link to here (https://www.stackage.org/lts https://www.stackage.org/lts) instead of hackage? Is there a general consensus to move beyond hackage? I thought your work on backpack was still ongoing and bridging the usability gap between cabal and stack, no?
- ezyang 10y ago
  Well, if you are a user using Stack, packages which are not in the LTS have to be added manually. So in a Stack universe, treating LTS as the universe of packages is not unreasonable. I don't think either Stack users or Cabal users think Hackage should go away; in particular if you're a library author, the way into the LTS is to publish something to Hackage and then ask Stackage to take it. As for Backpack, it doesn't really have much to do with the philosophy difference between Cabal and Stack. But I have, as necessary refactoring for implementing Backpack, been working on improving cabal-install, including the Nix-local builds feature which is supposed to make Cabal's usability story much better.
jerf 10y ago
A new website I understand. If one wants a radically different model of community participation than what the standard haskell site presents, by far the best and easiest thing for everybody is to just do it, and see what happens. The original can conservatively hang around, the new one can be trialed, if the new one is successful perhaps the original adapts or is even replaced. (IIRC, the maintainers of haskell.org have stated they don't have a lot of time to advance the backend and make significant changes.) That all makes sense to me. It's the rest of the fragmentation that doesn't.

ihuman 10y ago

Why are there two Haskell websites (haskell-lang.org and haskell.org)?

massysett 10y ago
You think that's confusing? The old home page led straight to a wiki, which is still up: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell
- ihuman 10y ago
  Which one is the official website and endorsed by the writers of the language/compiler?
  - massysett 10y ago
    I think it's fair to say that haskell.org is the "official" website that has the involvement and implicit backing of the old-timers. Also the GHC compiler is hosted on haskell.org. haskell-lang.org is the upstart. Whether it will last is an open question.
  - thu 10y ago
    I wouldn't say the "writers" are endorsing the old website, or not endorsing the new one, but whois is pretty telling: $ whois haskell-lang.org | grep ' Name:' Domain Name: HASKELL-LANG.ORG Registrant Name: FP Complete Corporation Admin Name: FP Complete Corporation Tech Name: FP Complete Corporation $ whois haskell.org | grep ' Name:' Domain Name: HASKELL.ORG Registrant Name: YaleUniversityComputer Science Department Haskell Group Admin Name: Galois Hostmaster Tech Name: Galois Hostmaster
  - sclv 10y ago
    The official website of the compiler itself is here: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ https://www.haskell.org/ghc/

hguant 10y ago

I guess I don't understand the need for a new IRC channel. #haskell is one of the best out there, both as a resource and a community. Why split it up?

zxexz 10y ago
I got the impression on #haskell-lang that the current occupants think the channel is about the new website. But with a channel name like that it definitely sounds like a channel devoted to Haskell discussion...and thus may become one. We already have #haskell, #haskell-overflow (sometimes even #haskell-overflow-overflow :P) and #haskell-beginners. I don't think there's a need for further IRC channels for language discussion. The current Haskell IRC community is beautiful and the least toxic and splintered of any I've ever been to.

wyager 10y ago

Why? How does this improve over the old one? I'm certainly not going to change IRC channels or subreddits.

riscy 10y ago

This seems like a community leadership coup to get people to use a different package management system, Stack.

cm3 10y ago

FWIW, I've tried to use stack twice and came back to cabal-install. There's also that I enable split-objects in ~/.cabal/config (not available in Stack) and often use GHC on platforms where there's no Stack-provided GHC available. That said, avoiding the compatibility problem of dependencies via curated package sets (Stackage) is a nice idea. However, Duncan's nix-local-build work makes the problems void from what I can tell, and Ed's Backpack work will improve the situation even more. Though, curated sets are still a nice idea regardless. I'm not a Haskell greybeard, just a light user, but despite the improvements via FPComplete's output, at least some of it feels NIH and unnecessarily polarizes the community. For instance, reusing Shake in Cabal(-install) and getting nix-local-build and Backpack production ready look like improvements that will be beneficial for a longer time, rather than splitting the community with a different build/package structure (stack). I mean, dividing the already small Haskell community doesn't make sense to me. If Gershom doesn't play fair with the management of www.haskell.org, this should be raised officially and fixed, because haskell.org is not a one man project and there's a team around it.

ezyang 10y ago
Credit where credit is due: nix-local-build is mostly Duncan Coutts work (I just wrote the announcement, and contributed some patches!)
- cm3 10y ago
  Thanks for the correction, fixed.
- massysett 10y ago
  Links to nix-local-build please? Is this the same as cabal new-build?
  - cm3 10y ago
    It's the same: http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build-nix-style-local-builds/ http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build-ni...