Downloads page & Haskell for Mac

Manuel M T Chakravarty

24 Oct 2015 24 Oct '15

6:48 a.m.

Sorry for jumping late into the discussion surrounding the downloads page. However, I would like to request that Haskell for Mac http://haskellformac.com be added to the page. I’m of course happy to make the edits myself and to submit a pull request, but I’d first like to ask what the community thinks is an appropriate way to add this Haskell distribution. Would it be appropriate to just add a fourth bullet point to the current list of three (Minimal, Stack & HP)? Cheers, Manuel

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Nicolas Wu

24 Oct 24 Oct

10 a.m.

On 24 October 2015 at 11:48, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

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Sorry for jumping late into the discussion surrounding the downloads page. However, I would like to request that Haskell for Mac http://haskellformac.com be added to the page. I’m of course happy to make the edits myself and to submit a pull request, but I’d first like to ask what the community thinks is an appropriate way to add this Haskell distribution.

Thanks for bringing this up! Haskell for Mac looks beautiful.

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Would it be appropriate to just add a fourth bullet point to the current list of three (Minimal, Stack & HP)?

I'm not sure. I feel nervous about placing a product that isn't free to use on the main Haskell.org downloads page. In fact, I even feel nervous about putting links to a toolchain if it explicitly endorses a particular product or company. I don't know if that's a sentiment that's shared amongst others, but we should definitely discuss it. My preference is that the haskell.org/downloads page should be targeted at beginners and be as simple and prescriptive as possible, while allowing the exploration of libraries and projects made available by the Haskell community. I'm of the opinion that the current incarnation is too confusing as it stands with three options. With that said, I think the main downloads page should at least point to another page that lists and perhaps even discusses all the options available. This should include compilers other than GHC and links to commercially available tools. Perhaps this would be an extension of https://wiki.haskell.org/Implementations. I also think that it would be worth considering having official sponsors listed somewhere else on haskell.org, and this might be a good place for this. What do others think? Best wishes, Nick

John Wiegley

1:47 p.m.

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Nicolas Wu writes:

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With that said, I think the main downloads page should at least point to another page that lists and perhaps even discusses all the options available. This should include compilers other than GHC and links to commercially available tools. Perhaps this would be an extension of https://wiki.haskell.org/Implementations.

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I also think that it would be worth considering having official sponsors listed somewhere else on haskell.org, and this might be a good place for this.

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What do others think?

Yes, this was the intention with our "third party downloads" section that remained unfinished at the end of the last round. Let's then begin our second round. We know we want the main downloads page to link to an "alternate methods" page, and for this other page to exhaustively describe/link to all the other means by which Haskell may be installed on a user's machine. We can begin by creating a list of everything we want to link to. Gershom has already begun this. Once we have that list, should we standardize on something like alphabetical order, so that no one option is given priority? I also agree with Nicolas that we probably shouldn't expand the current downloads page any further. It is quite long as it stands. John

Manuel M T Chakravarty

25 Oct 25 Oct

12:13 a.m.

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Nicolas Wu : On 24 October 2015 at 11:48, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

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Would it be appropriate to just add a fourth bullet point to the current list of three (Minimal, Stack & HP)?

I'm not sure. I feel nervous about placing a product that isn't free to use on the main Haskell.org downloads page. In fact, I even feel nervous about putting links to a toolchain if it explicitly endorses a particular product or company. I don't know if that's a sentiment that’s shared amongst others, but we should definitely discuss it.

I think, the downloads page ought to be clear and objective. As such commercial software needs to be clearly identified and the descriptions must be factual (and not read like ads). Other than that, isn’t it the purpose of haskell.org to make it as easy as possible to get up and running with Haskell? From all the feedback that I got from users so far, Haskell for Mac is by far the easiest way to get started with Haskell on a Mac. If we are up front about its commercial nature, visitors to the site can decide for themselves whether the purchase costs and the commercial nature are worth the added convenience to them.

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My preference is that the haskell.org/downloads page should be targeted at beginners and be as simple and prescriptive as possible, while allowing the exploration of libraries and projects made available by the Haskell community.

Haskell for Mac is squarely targeted at beginners. It is arguably much more beginner friendly than any of the other alternatives. In particular, it requires no knowledge of the command line and no separate installation of an editor. Manuel

John Wiegley

27 Oct 27 Oct

10:56 p.m.

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Manuel M T Chakravarty writes:

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Other than that, isn’t it the purpose of haskell.org to make it as easy as possible to get up and running with Haskell? From all the feedback that I got from users so far, Haskell for Mac is by far the easiest way to get started with Haskell on a Mac. If we are up front about its commercial nature, visitors to the site can decide for themselves whether the purchase costs and the commercial nature are worth the added convenience to them.

Hi Manuel, We still have the problem that the current downloads page is quite long. Since I can't see replacing one of those options with Haskell for Mac, that only leaves adding a fourth option -- which begs the question why other perfectly viable options are also not there. At some point, we have to draw a somewhat arbitrary line. In our "third party downloads" section, we could add a link to a page targeted specifically at beginners, with Haskell for Mac as a prominent member of the "Mac" section on that page. Would that suffice? I realize you want to get the word out to those who need to hear it, and burying the lead past a link may lose some of the audience you're aiming for. This has to be balanced against our need to keep the community-backed options clear and visible, and avoid additional confusion for the sake of a better option for some. John

Manuel M T Chakravarty

10 Nov 10 Nov

6:13 a.m.

John Wiegley :

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Manuel M T Chakravarty writes:

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Other than that, isn’t it the purpose of haskell.org to make it as easy as possible to get up and running with Haskell? From all the feedback that I got from users so far, Haskell for Mac is by far the easiest way to get started with Haskell on a Mac. If we are up front about its commercial nature, visitors to the site can decide for themselves whether the purchase costs and the commercial nature are worth the added convenience to them.

Hi Manuel,

We still have the problem that the current downloads page is quite long. Since I can't see replacing one of those options with Haskell for Mac, that only leaves adding a fourth option -- which begs the question why other perfectly viable options are also not there. At some point, we have to draw a somewhat arbitrary line.

To be honest, I didn’t want to restart a discussion about the rest of the downloads page, but maybe that is inevitable. I totally agree that the current downloads page is quite long. In fact, it is much too long. It is so long that I’m not sure who the target audience is supposed to be. Head over to python.org https://www.python.org and hover over ”Downloads”. Without even going to a separate page you get a popup that immediately presents you with two options specific to the OS you are running (choosing between Python 2.x and Python 3.x). Then, to the left of that is a menu with other options if you are enough of an expert to want to explore the available options further. (If you click on ”Downloads”, you go to a page that also has the two download options right at the top and then more details below, which you can happily ignore.) That’s it. That’s how a good download section looks like. Why do we even have three options?[1] To somebody new to Haskell, these options are essentially the same. A newcomer doesn’t have the information to make a meaningful choice at this stage. Hence, you create confusion. I realise that some of you put quite some effort into this page and I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but please try to look at it from the perspective of somebody who is new to Haskell. They have one goal: be able to write some Haskell code with as little upfront effort as possible. They don’t care about differences in package management and what not. (It’s not just that they don’t know about it, they don’t want to learn about it!) There is of course a place for describing the difference between the three types of installations, but that’s somewhere deep down in the section for experienced users who want to fine-tune their environment. Let me give you one more datapoint. I have run lots of university courses teaching Haskell. I have been bombarded by students questions about installation problems semester after semester. Now, would I point my students to the current downloads page? No — because it would drastically increase the number of problem reports I get. (I typically write my own downloads page specifically for the course, because the community-supplied ones are too confusing.) So, what to do? There can only be *one* installation option and that should query the browser info to preselect the download for the user’s OS. Then, in addition to that one canonical download, there can be a list of options, maybe sorted by OSes or by CLI vs GUI or some other dimension that is meaningful to somebody who is unfamiliar with the Haskell tool chain.

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In our "third party downloads" section, we could add a link to a page targeted specifically at beginners, with Haskell for Mac as a prominent member of the "Mac" section on that page. Would that suffice?

Is there a ”third party downloads” section at the moment? As I wrote above, I think, the main page should have a single option with a menu (or list) of alternative categories. I don’t think ”third party” is a good label, though. Good UI design takes the perspective of the user and presents choices in terms of the information that the user possesses (and is able to use for meaningful choices). Choices that are meaningful in the mind of a newcomer looking for a way to use Haskell are, for example, * is it free or do I have to pay, and * does it have a GUI or do I have to use the CLI.

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I realize you want to get the word out to those who need to hear it, and burying the lead past a link may lose some of the audience you're aiming for. This has to be balanced against our need to keep the community-backed options clear and visible, and avoid additional confusion for the sake of a better option for some.

Sure. However, all the community-baked options have one disadvantage for a lot of people: you need to use the command line and get your hands dirty with configurations. This is a deal breaker for many people and it makes Haskell inaccessible to these people. It also strongly contributes to the popular opinion that Haskell is an elite language for experts. I think that this is very unfortunate. Haskell is, for example, great for teaching programming to people who have never programmed before (including children). The CLI-based ecosystem is a serious obstacle for that. Cheers, Manuel [1] This is a rhetorical question. We do have three choices for political reasons. User interface design by committee usually leads to these compromises.

Gershom B

11:10 a.m.

On November 10, 2015 at 6:13:27 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty (chak@justtesting.org) wrote:

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In our "third party downloads" section, we could add a link to a page targeted specifically at beginners, with Haskell for Mac as a prominent member of the "Mac" section on that page. Would that suffice?

Is there a ”third party downloads” section at the moment?

Nope, but the proposal is to create one. People have been rather busy but ideally a draft such section should be sent out by the end of this week? Or rather, the proposal is to create a small one, and use it to point to a page on e.g. the haskell wiki that is more organized and comprehensive, but such a page also needs to be created.

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As I wrote above, I think, the main page should have a single option with a menu (or list) of alternative categories. I don’t think ”third party” is a good label, though. Good UI design takes the perspective of the user and presents choices in terms of the information that the user possesses (and is able to use for meaningful choices).

I agree that “third party” is not a good label. Do you have a better suggestion? “Other installers and distributions”? —Gershom

Manuel M T Chakravarty

12 Nov 12 Nov

6:44 a.m.

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Gershom B : On November 10, 2015 at 6:13:27 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty (chak@justtesting.org) wrote:

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In our "third party downloads" section, we could add a link to a page targeted specifically at beginners, with Haskell for Mac as a prominent member of the "Mac" section on that page. Would that suffice?

Is there a ”third party downloads” section at the moment?

Nope, but the proposal is to create one. People have been rather busy but ideally a draft such section should be sent out by the end of this week? Or rather, the proposal is to create a small one, and use it to point to a page on e.g. the haskell wiki that is more organized and comprehensive, but such a page also needs to be created.

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As I wrote above, I think, the main page should have a single option with a menu (or list) of alternative categories. I don’t think ”third party” is a good label, though. Good UI design takes the perspective of the user and presents choices in terms of the information that the user possesses (and is able to use for meaningful choices).

I agree that “third party” is not a good label. Do you have a better suggestion? “Other installers and distributions”?

If you do insist on having just one label, then ”Other installers and distributions” is certainly better than ”third party”. However, it would be better to have a few links with meaningful labels at this point — e.g., ”IDEs”, ”Native package managers”, ”Command line installers” and so forth. Manuel

Gershom B

19 Nov 19 Nov

2:53 a.m.

I've put together a "Distributions" page on the Haskell wiki, with the goal that the Downloads section of haskell.org can point to it: https://wiki.haskell.org/Distributions Anyone with any ideas on things to add, text to improve, or other cleanup should definitely have at editing it :-) Additionally, it would be good to whip the IDE page into much cleaner shape so we can link to it as well, if anyone wants to tackle that: https://wiki.haskell.org/IDEs Relatedly, it occurs to me that we should do something about that "Libraries" Section of the "Downloads" page. Do we want a top level "Libraries" page on haskell.org that also embeds e.g. some search boxes (for say hoogle, hayoo, and hackage) and can be more comprehensive? That would certainly feel cleaner to me... Also, I have a nagging question about how we can feature ghcjs somewhere, since it is very much "another haskell distribution" in some interesting sense. Any proposals for where it fits would be welcome. Cheers, Gershom On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 6:44 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

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Gershom B : On November 10, 2015 at 6:13:27 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty (chak@justtesting.org) wrote:

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In our "third party downloads" section, we could add a link to a page targeted specifically at beginners, with Haskell for Mac as a prominent member of the "Mac" section on that page. Would that suffice?

Is there a ”third party downloads” section at the moment?

Nope, but the proposal is to create one. People have been rather busy but ideally a draft such section should be sent out by the end of this week? Or rather, the proposal is to create a small one, and use it to point to a page on e.g. the haskell wiki that is more organized and comprehensive, but such a page also needs to be created.

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As I wrote above, I think, the main page should have a single option with a menu (or list) of alternative categories. I don’t think ”third party” is a good label, though. Good UI design takes the perspective of the user and presents choices in terms of the information that the user possesses (and is able to use for meaningful choices).

I agree that “third party” is not a good label. Do you have a better suggestion? “Other installers and distributions”?

If you do insist on having just one label, then ”Other installers and distributions” is certainly better than ”third party”. However, it would be better to have a few links with meaningful labels at this point — e.g., ”IDEs”, ”Native package managers”, ”Command line installers” and so forth.

Manuel

Gershom B

24 Oct 24 Oct

11:51 a.m.

Hiya Manuel. So the plan was, and I guess still should be, that we were going to have a second discussion on "other download methods" at the bottom of the downloads page, and how to handle listing all sorts of various other things. For example, Haskell for Mac, Kronos IHaskell Notebook, Halcyon, Nix, the fact that one can run Haskell for free over Sage Math Cloud. Also there is the question of if we should link to some place that documents IDEs more too, since often people consider these days IDEs the third critical component of a language along with the way to compile things and the way to manage additional libraries. Anyway, people got busy and we didn't kick off this "other download methods" portion of the discussion in a very timely fashion, so thanks for the push. One question I have is about Haskell for Mac itself. Given appstore restrictions, it sort of has a dual character. I suppose my question is, ultimately, do you see it more as a "way to download haskell" or an "amazing development environment for haskell" (that ultimately has to provide a bundled compiler because of appstore issues). In any case, I don't exactly share Nicolas' concerns about pointing to commercial / non-open-source stuff, as long as we make sure we point to the100% open-source-stuff bigger and first :-) I do share the concern that the page is sort of long and confusing enough already. And as I mentioned above, Haskell for Mac is one of a number of neat tools that are not discoverable from the downloads page now. I don't think /Implementations is quite the right wiki page, but maybe we could point to two pages, one for /Install_Methods and one for /Recommended_IDEs ? (with some things like IHaskell and Haskell for Mac living in both)? -gershom On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 6:48 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:

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Sorry for jumping late into the discussion surrounding the downloads page. However, I would like to request that Haskell for Mac http://haskellformac.com be added to the page. I’m of course happy to make the edits myself and to submit a pull request, but I’d first like to ask what the community thinks is an appropriate way to add this Haskell distribution.

Would it be appropriate to just add a fourth bullet point to the current list of three (Minimal, Stack & HP)?

Cheers, Manuel

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Manuel M T Chakravarty

25 Oct 25 Oct

12:36 a.m.

Gershom B :

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Hiya Manuel.

So the plan was, and I guess still should be, that we were going to have a second discussion on "other download methods" at the bottom of the downloads page, and how to handle listing all sorts of various other things. For example, Haskell for Mac, Kronos IHaskell Notebook, Halcyon, Nix, the fact that one can run Haskell for free over Sage Math Cloud. Also there is the question of if we should link to some place that documents IDEs more too, since often people consider these days IDEs the third critical component of a language along with the way to compile things and the way to manage additional libraries.

Anyway, people got busy and we didn't kick off this "other download methods" portion of the discussion in a very timely fashion, so thanks for the push.

One question I have is about Haskell for Mac itself. Given appstore restrictions, it sort of has a dual character. I suppose my question is, ultimately, do you see it more as a "way to download haskell" or an "amazing development environment for haskell" (that ultimately has to provide a bundled compiler because of App Store issues).

Actually, both :) Let me share a little story that was part of the motivation for developing Haskell for Mac. The last few summers, I’ve started teaching my (now 11yro) son Haskell. The year before last, he asked me whether some of his friends could join in. In the end, I had six 9-10yros who I wanted to teach Haskell. They all brought their own (or rather parent’s) MacBooks and on our first session I asked the parents to stay around at the start, so they could enter admin passwords, while I tried to get everybody up and running with Haskell and a text editor on their laptops. It was a mess and took much longer than I had planned. (And I have been installing GHC since it was version 0.16, I believe.) Then, I had the kids use the usual mixture of text editor, command line, and ghci, which works, but was a significant distraction and cognitive burden on top of trying to teach them a bit of programming. This was the point where I decided that the status quo is ridiculous and that there are two major problems: (1) difficulty of installation of the toolchain and (2) difficulty of use of the toolchain. Haskell for Mac addresses both. Hence, it bundles the compiler and libraries on purpose, not because of the rules of the App Store. It is actually the other way around. I knew that I wanted to bundle everything, which led me to the idea of distributing through the App Store. Hence, a major purpose of Haskell for Mac is to serve as a Haskell distribution. This is why I believe it belongs on the downloads page. Manuel PS: BTW, this is exactly what Apple does with Xcode, too. Xcode bundles the compilers and tools and you get the IDE and toolchain in one App Store download. To the user, this is the most convenient option.

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Gershom B
John Wiegley
Manuel M T Chakravarty
Nicolas Wu

Downloads page & Haskell for Mac

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