Re: [Haskell-cafe] Haskell Platform and Leksah on Windows

Hi, I understood what's wrong about my approach - and since I want to use an IDE to assist me, I will try both EclipseFP and Sublime Text, to see how that works. My feeling was that since the leksah website suggested that cabal is the way to do it and since when I search for a Haskell IDE that is it, then it was obvious that the recommended way doesn't work as it should. In my mind the platform was broken, I understand now that it's not the platform, just this special way of using it. I was also in awe of the fact that nobody really says anything about these difficulties, and felt like an estranged child that messed things up badly; however, it seems that the real issue is that nobody really does it that way, and I was wrong to actually try it like that. As I said (or haven't, but will) once I will get the hang of it I will recount my experience for others to follow, hopefully in better terms than this frustrating first experience. Many thanks for everyone's advice on the list, Dorin On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 9:48 PM, Carter Schonwald wrote:

Hey Dorin, I don't understand your claims.

1) haskell has worked perfectly well on windows for quite some time. I used HUGs nearly a decade ago, and in more recent time (2-3 years ago) I helped teach an introductory first computer science class using GHC where many students were doing great work using notepad++ and ghci.

I don't understand your focus on emacs and make files.

2) if you want an "IDE" experience, Sublime Text with the right plugins, or perhaps EclipseFP are worth checking out.

3) likewise, if you're finding tooling on windows unsatisfactory, help fix it! Bug reports, patches, or new tools and libraries are always welcome. Haskell is a relatively small community, and thusly limited manpower (we're all volunteers), so way to fix any problem is help out!

cheers

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Dorin Lazar wrote:

...

Hello, I am the original author of the post, and I finally received the emails from the mailman (probably there was an issue with the automated requests). My answers are inlined.

...

1) Leksah should not be considered an "official haskell ide", but merely one of many community supported editing tools. And frankly one of the less widely used ones at that! Leksah is not used much at all by anyone, though theres probably a handful of folks who do use it. Many folks use editors like Sublime Tex (2/3), Emacs, Vi(m), textmate, and many more. Its worth noting that the sublime-haskell plugin for sublime text, and analogous packages for many other editors, provide haskell IDE-like powers, or at least a nice subset thereof. Unfortunately, I think the problem with this is that we have a different vision on how development should be done. I have extensive experience of working from console, with a simple text editor and hand-made Makefiles or anything similar. However, an IDE should be a productivity tool, that can help you improve your understanding of the language, and can assist you in following the proper syntax for a new language. While learning by doing 'write, save, compile, examine error message' is ok with me, it is slow, and it limits the time I can dedicate to learning the language itself. A better cycle is the current 'write, examine error message' of most IDEs, since it's faster and requires no context switch. Sure, editors can help there. IDEs do this by default. So it's normal of me to search for an IDE to better learn the language, I'll leave the emacs + console version for when I am productive in the language.

...

2) There are people working on building better easily portable native gui toolkits, but in many respects, a nice haskelly gui toolkit is still something people are experimetning with how to do well. theres lots of great tools out as of the past year or two, many more in progress on various time scales, and gtk2hs is great for linux (and thats fine). Unfortunately, this is not what's advertised. In fact, on the leksah site, the recommended method is to have the IDE installed via cabal. In another mail Mihai calls me unreasonable, but I think it's reasonable to think that the recommended method should be the one that works. But the easy to tell truth is that the Haskell Platform for Windows is not mature enough yet. That is something I can understand, and I can recommend other beginners to install a Linux VM for Haskell. That is perfectly fine, zero cost, 100% gain. However, the mistakes from the Haskell Platform as it is now on Windows should be pointed out, and although I've been called a mystical animal that wants only free support, I think what I had in that blog post was actually a bug report for the people that can actually add 1+1 to make 2 when it comes to the Haskell Platform for Windows. Surely, I was harsh. But that's the first experience of a beginner with Haskell, and I chose to contribute my experience to people more knowledgeable instead of shutting up and hiding the dust under the rug.

Many thanks, Dorin