I am very happy to see this paper. It was an enjoyable read, and accessible to non-experts such as myself. I appreciated the effort spent on research, and was even happier to see that you have started implementing these suggestions and have a plan going forward. Technical debt is a hard thing to overcome, especially in the face of a rapidly evolving language.
This paper resonates with me as both a user and one-time (as in a single time🙂) developer of GHC. As a user, I’ve run into issues related to the debts you discuss. I also tried to fix a GHC bug, and remember being overwhelmed by DynFlags.
I applaud your efforts. Thank you for this service to the Haskell community.
Eric Crockett