Andrew,
On 29 September 2015 at 01:15, Andrew Bernard
Since starting to look on Hackage for packages for such vital things as queues and algorithms, I am surprised to see very low numbers of downloads for packages that seem to me to be vitally important.
Overall I am puzzled about this. I am trying to establish what packages to use in my coding and there seems to be little indication of what to choose, and how to assess code maturity. What am I missing?
I suggest simply asking the list. You should get a few opinions, especially for "vital" packages, as long as you are precise about what you need. If you're lucky, sometimes the actual authors/maintainers will respond. If you're even luckier, you might get a response from one the champions of our community. Most of these opinions should come with some reasoning/justification. Sure, they're just anecdotes, but the commentary can be far more useful for making a decision than the relative number of downloads. -- Thomas Koster