Re: [Haskell-community] 2018 state of Haskell survey results

[Michael Snoyman]

Just wanted to add in: good catch Gershom on identifying the problem, and thank 
you Taylor for working to remove them from the report.

> On 18 Nov 2018, at 21:17, Taylor Fausak  wrote:
> 
> Great catch, Gershom! There are indeed about 300 responses that tick all the 
> boxes except for disliking the new GHC release schedule. The main thing the 
> attacker seemed to be interested in was over-representing Stack and Stackage. 
> Also, bizarrely, Java. 
> 
> That brings the number of bogus responses up to 3,735, which puts the number 
> of legitimate responses at 1,361. For context, last year's survey asked far 
> fewer questions and had 1,335 responses.
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
>> What if the announcement mentioned a large number of potentially bogus 
>> responses, explained the grounds for this conclusion, with a new survey 
>> conducted early next year?
>> 
>> The next survey would then need to be done differently from this one 
>> somehow. To improve the reliability, some authentication may be necessary.
>> 
>> 
>> Maybe Stack, Cabal questions could be grouped as separate distinct surveys, 
>> conducted by their maintainers through own channels?
>> 
>> Not sure how much value is in exact numbers of users of Stack or Cabal. Both 
>> groups are large enough. The maintainers of both groups are aware about 
>> usage stats.
>> 
>> Is either library likely to be influenced by this survey?
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Re: [Haskell-community] haskell.org download page

[Michael Snoyman]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply Nick.

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Nicolas Wu <nicolas...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Michael,
>
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 6:37 AM Michael Snoyman <mich...@fpcomplete.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 12:41 AM, Nicolas Wu <nicolas...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I think a beginner doesn't usually make the choice of how to use
>>> GHC/stack/cabal by themselves; they are usually being instructed by someone
>>> (or a resource) that has decided that for them.
>>>
>>
>> I disagree, and that's where a lot of this debate comes from. Let me give
>> an example from another language. Suppose you know nothing about Rust, and
>> decide you want to learn Rust because you see a blog post talking about how
>> awesome Rust is (with no specific link to "get started here," which is
>> frequently the case). You'd probably go to Google and search "Rust
>> programming language," and show up on their homepage. They have two links
>> that stand out (to me at least):
>>
>> * A big "Download" button, which provides the compiler and build tool
>> (AFAICT it does not include non-standard libraries, so pretty equivalent to
>> HP Minimal)
>> *  A "Show me" link taking you straight to a tutorial, which covers both
>> command line invocation for the compiler _and_ the build tool
>>
>> This is the documentation issue I've raised a few times: a new user
>> coming from nowhere has no way of really getting started with Haskell after
>> downloading the platform. _Some_ kind of "go here next" is necessary if we
>> want to improve the new Haskeller bounce rate (which is all I'm concerned
>> with). By that metric, a solid "how to get far in Haskell with just
>> standard libraries and the ghc executable" would work, as would a tutorial
>> on "writing applications with HP and cabal-install."
>>
>
> If I've understood you correctly, I agree on this point: we should be
> providing a single download that contains something equivalent to the HP
> Minimal. That's what I'm suggesting. I also agree that pointing to a
> tutorial that outlines how to actually use the tools is useful.
>
>
I'd be far less concerned about HP Minimal if:

1. Having a tutorial go along with it was a prereq to bumping its position.
2. The issues that Stack users have been running into are addressed first.
There _are_ bug reports coming into the Stack issue tracker about this
(like there were with GHC for Mac OS X previously), and this is an undue
burden to place on the Stack maintainers.

My reason for an immediate -1 on the proposal is that, as it stands today,
I would describe the HP Minimal content on haskell.org/downloads as a
"brick wall" for anyone not following a preexisting guide. (And for someone
already following a different guide: who cares what haskell.org says?
They'll just follow the guide.)


> However, based on my experience working with new users (both through
>> Yesod, general Haskell work, and at my day job), I believe that Stack
>> covers the job best, since:
>>
>> 1. The Haskell standard libraries are very bare bones, so most users will
>> quickly want an additional library, even just for experimenting
>> 2. I still see users complaining about dependency solving problems with
>> cabal-install, and new users will likely be turned off very quickly by that
>> 3. Stack+curated package sets has produced much lower friction in these
>> regards
>> 4. Stack already has a quick start guide (https://docs.haskellstack.
>> org/en/stable/README/#quick-start-guide), in-depth guide (
>> https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/GUIDE/), and has usage covered
>> by books and tutorials. I don't believe a holistic workflow is included in
>> the HP or the Cabal websites for cabal-install workflow (though if I'm
>> mistaken, please point it out, that would be an interesting comparison).
>>
>
> This is where I think you and I have different use cases, and where I'm
> advocating diversity that will allow us both to teach as we like.
>
> In my experience as a university lecturer that teaches students learning
> Haskell in the first term of their first year, I have a different approach
> that has also seen success. My initial tutorials require students to invoke
> ghc and ghci to familiarise themselves with the concepts of compilers and
> interpreters. They do so on small self-contained exercises. I'm at the
> same time trying to get them used to the command line, since for many this
> will be their first experience of any development at all. They need a
> simple workflow at this point s

[Haskell-community] HP Minimal+Stack issue on Windows

[Michael Snoyman]

I had a niggling worry last night, and it turned out to be an actual issue,
filed at:

https://github.com/haskell/haskell-platform/issues/251

Note that this is a serious issue; it will make Stack essentially unusable
for anyone using HP Minimal on Windows and trying to use GHC 8. Regardless
of any other discussions around changing the download page, I'd request
that this bug be resolved first. Not only will it cause user problems, but
will potentially cause a significant maintenance burden for Stack (I heard
from Stack maintainers in the past that a similar situation existed with
GHC for Mac OS X shipping an old buggy Stack version).
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