Taylor
On the GHC side, as I say we are going to do a 1-question GHC survey shortly,
so you don't need to bother about that one. (I think it'd be too buried as one
question among many in your survey.)
| - Reaction to the new pace of GHC releases
That would be interesting, yes.
It would be interesting to know people's perceptions of the (relatively new)
GHC Proposals process. Do they even know about it? Do they follow what is
going on? Does the greater transparency and opportunity to contribute makes
them feel a greater sense of ownership?
I also wonder if they feel included or excluded in our shared enterprise of
making GHC a better tool.
Simon
| -Original Message-
| From: Taylor Fausak
| Sent: 16 October 2018 00:43
| To: Simon Peyton Jones ; Gershom B
| ; Mathieu Boespflug ; Ben Gamari
|
| Cc: haskell-community@haskell.org
| Subject: Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey
|
| Thanks for the kind words, Simon! They mean a lot :)
|
| I would be happy to include questions that would benefit the GHC team,
| including:
|
| - Simon's question
| - Reaction to the new pace of GHC releases
| - Target of the GHC team's focus: performance, features, ergonomics, etc.
| - Average wait time before upgrading GHC
|
| Are there any other questions the GHC team would be interested in asking?
| Perhaps I should ask on a different mailing list.
|
| In response to Gershom's comments:
|
| 1. Asking how people heard about the survey is a great idea. Not only would
| it let me identify the best ways to reach people, it could also be useful
| in dealing with selection bias.
|
| 2. Addressed above.
|
| 3. In general, distinguishing between work and home is something I would
| love to do for basically every question. Unfortunately I think that would
| balloon the size of the survey. Maybe identifying a few key questions for
| the work/home split would be the best way to go? Build systems, as you
| identified, are certainly one of those key questions. Maybe GHC versions
| used is another?
|
| 4. I also like Go's survey and have been trying to crib as much as I can
| from it. Questions worth asking:
| - Area of development (web, embedded, etc.)
| - Type of development (server, CLI, desktop, library, etc.)
| - Deploy environments / infrastructure
| - Internal versus external
|
| 5. Asking about JS solutions for web developers is a great idea! I like the
| choices you've given, and there are a whole slew of JS libraries to include
| as well, such as React or Vue.
|
| 6. Giving multiple choice answers to the "why did you stop" question (and,
| in fact, as many questions as possible) is awesome and would make the
| results much easier to digest. It also makes things easier to compare
| across time, which could be used to gauge the effectiveness of various
| endeavors.
|
| Thank you all for your feedback so far! I am very excited about this year's
| survey. I want to include as many useful questions as I can without
| overwhelming respondents. As I continue to develop the survey, I constantly
| ask myself this question: "How would I act on responses to this question?"
| For example, last year's survey asked if people had contributed to an open
| source Haskell project. I suspect I will exclude that question because it's
| not really actionable.
|
| With regards to Haskell.org sponsorship, I still think that throwing around
| the words "official" and "Haskell.org" would do a lot in terms of
| credibility. I don't expect that to remove selection bias, but it will let
| me (us, really) say: We're doing this together for the benefit of all
| sides. And if people have problems with the survey, I want them to feel
| comfortable trying to fix those problems, even if they're not on my "side".
|
| On Mon, Oct 15, 2018, at 3:55 AM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:
| > The GHC team (coincidentally) is cooking up a very short survey
| > that is intended to help guide our strategic priorities.
| >
| > There is only one substantial question:
| >
| > Imagine that you had one developer working on GHC for
| > six months full-time, that you were paying for yourself.
| > What would you ask that person to do? Keep in mind that
| > the project should be within GHC itself and tractable
| > in a six-month time-frame.
| >
| > It has a rather different purpose to Taylor's proposed survey
| > and FP Complete's, because it is not comprehensive, but instead
| > focuses on a single question about a single artefact.
| >
| > Returning to Taylor's question list, yes, it would be interesting to
| > know whether the increased release tempo is perceived as helpful or
| > unhelpful. (It's helpful for the development /process/ because it makes
| > reduces the pressure to squeeze "just one more thing" into a release:
| > the next bus will be along in only 6 months.)
| >
| > Incidentally, I for one think that it's a Good Thing that you included
| > FP Complete's survey in the HWN, Taylor. First, I think
