On 12/14/06, Neil Mitchell
Hi
* Give tips on how to answer questions
+ Ok. we can put up an article here. Some suggestions: - No questions are bad questions - Code should come with examples of how to run it - Solutions with unsafePerformIO should be discouraged (moreso ;) - Be polite! (we're good at this)
I'd say our worst feature is tending to give solutions which are not "simple" Haskell, but make use of advanced features. When a beginner asks a question, sometimes the answer requires GADT's, Template Haskell, rank-2 types etc. However this is usually because they asked the wrong question - thinking in an imperative frame of mind. Often it would be better to peel back to the original problem, where the answer is more likely to be pure neat Haskell.
As a newbie, and a lurker on this list, I'd second this. Often, the subtle and sophisticated answers are very rewarding to study, but they do give the impression that what the person who asked the original question was trying to do, is hard. Generally, it's a turn-off to feel that something which seems simple in another (probably procedural) language is hard in Haskell. At its worst, it comes across as people trying to look clever, rather than trying to help. If the user thinks it's a simple task, show a simple answer where at all possible. But overall I'd agree, this is a very helpful community - it's just that you all seem so much cleverer than I, so I'm not sure I'll ever be smart enough to write Haskell programs :-) (50% joke...) Paul.