I have found my Yesod experience equal to other haskell libraries- it is simple and obvious after you have used it for a while (if you are familiar with the domain, which in this case is web development, including REST, MVC, and databases). I am going to have to disagree with any vague assertion about Yesod being difficult to understand. I can only assume since you aren't giving any specific examples that you haven't used Yesod on a project. We know there are many places Yesod can be improved, but we know that from specific criticisms from Yesod users (which we welcome). I also find it very controversial to imply that Snap is less complex because it has less functionality. That may make the *framework* less complex, but it makes *applications* more complex if they need the missing functionality. Again, I think the problem that you are others are encountering is an assumption that readers know a lot more about Yesod than they possibly could if they haven't used it. Lets encourage the community to present web-devel discussions in a little broader light that is easier for everyone to understand. Greg Weber On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Chris Smith wrote:

On Jun 28, 2011 9:16 AM, "Greg Weber" wrote:

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I would much rather revisit this issue in a month or so than keep this thread alive, but I feel the need to defend the good name of Yesod. Yesod libraries are no more complex than other Haskell libraries.

I'm not sure where we have different definitions in mind; surely it can't be controversial that web application containers are far more complex than most other libraries. Just look at the dependencies on any such project. I'd call it a fair statement that no one thought the problems of Cabal scaling to very large numbers of packages was much of a problem until web frameworks started being a big deal. It also seems rather non-controversial to point out that Yesod includes a lot more here than other options; the Snap project, for example, happily proclaims itself to work at a level of abstraction analogous to servlets, and currently makes no attempt at solving persistence, form handling, and such.

In any case, sorry if that sounded like sullying the "good name" of Yesod. I didn't even think it was particularly controversial.

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The issue is simply that a Yesod thread assumes you have developed a web application in Yesod. Or if it is about implementation, it may assume you have looked at a library's internals. As you said, it isn't about your lack of *general* web development knowledge. It is a lack of Yesod *specific* knowledge.

Yes, that's precisely my point. I can think of very few other domains of Haskell programming where having not used a specific library even if you're familiar with the kind of problem it solves causes discussion about that library to look about as meaningful as ancient heiroglyphics. OpenGL would be one, as well as GHC internals. I'm having trouble finding other examples.

Again, this isn't a dig at Yesod... I don't think *anyone* has found a good way to build a web application framework that's both simple and obvious to understand and solves the hard problems. I think it's at least partly endemic to the problem domain.

-- Chris Smith