2) Languages like Python make it easy to write fast performing code in a few lines that will read/write files, split strings, and build lists or dictionaries/associative arrays. There are very clever ways of doing all these things Haskell, but it can involve several qualified imports and time researching ByteStrings/Lazy ByteStrings/ByteString.Char8. It would be nice to have a single module that exports some common text operations via ByteStrings without requiring a lot of upfront research time learning to work with ByteStrings, and possibly a limited export of Data.Map features as well.
It's basically just Data.Text, Data.ByteString, Data.Map, and various things from the prelude. The problem is that once people learn where those things are they forget their own learning process and start thinking its obvious and everyone should know. Maybe a python <-> haskell equivalents cheatsheet could serve the purpose? And you're probably a good person to do it since you haven't forgotten the learning process yet :) You can just register on the wiki and start adding things. Maybe the page even already exists. E.g.: s = open(fn).read() ==> s <- Text.readFile fn '\n'.join(sorted(s.split('\n'))) ==> Text.unlines . List.sort . Text.lines lineByWord = dict(tuple(line.split(':', 1)) for line in lines) ==> lineByWord = Map.fromList [(word, rest) | line <- lines, let (word, rest) = Text.break (==':') line] now = datetime.datetime.now() print '\n'.join((now - datetime.strptime(..., m)).days for m in re.groups(r'...', line)) ==> you tell me :) Or whatever other things you are doing in python that you wish you could do as easily in haskell. If they're used to the above style of python, then there are pretty direct translations for everything. If they are used to a more imperative style then I think some upfront research time is unavoidable, but it'll be good for them.