String is a type alias for a lazy linked list of characters: not very high performance, but easy to work with using all the basic list manipulation tools. Text

String is a type alias for a lazy linked list of characters: not very high performance, but easy to work with using all the basic list manipulation tools. Text is a compact and efficient representation, more similar to strings in other languages. As far as learning libraries: its not mandatory and you can code as well as anywhere else without them, but the "language enhancing libraries" are undeniably useful, and can do some incredibly useful things. Monad transformers let you merge computational contexts, Conduit lets you cleanly define stream transformations, Lens lets you manipulate specific aspects of some state in a context, etc.