thinking of switching...
so, as the title suggests, i'm think ing of switching to xmonad for my wm... my Q is: how much haskell do i need to know to use it effectively? at the moment i am pre-alpha grasshopper status in my haskell coding skills, (i know haskell exists and is high on my list of languages to learn) though i don't want to have to become a haskell guru in order to be able to use xmonad. so really, what's the learning curve like to start using xmonad? hex -- my blog is cooler than yours: serialhex.github.com The wise man said: "Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to their level and beat you with experience."
Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux over BSD?
No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical. -- Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux
On 2011-09-07 17:01:55, serialhex wrote:
my Q is: how much haskell do i need to know to use it effectively? at the moment i am pre-alpha grasshopper status in my haskell coding skills, (i know haskell exists and is high on my list of languages to learn) though i don't want to have to become a haskell guru in order to be able to use xmonad. so really, what's the learning curve like to start using xmonad?
It depends what you want to do, of course. I am happy with my 19 line configuration file constructed by reviewing the excellent documentation and I think a couple of web searches. No prior knowledge of Haskell and next to none now. Why not give a try and see how it goes? /Allan -- Allan Wind Life Integrity, LLC http://lifeintegrity.com
Allan Wind [2011.09.07 1741 -0400]:
On 2011-09-07 17:01:55, serialhex wrote:
my Q is: how much haskell do i need to know to use it effectively? at the moment i am pre-alpha grasshopper status in my haskell coding skills, (i know haskell exists and is high on my list of languages to learn) though i don't want to have to become a haskell guru in order to be able to use xmonad. so really, what's the learning curve like to start using xmonad?
It depends what you want to do, of course.
I am happy with my 19 line configuration file constructed by reviewing the excellent documentation and I think a couple of web searches. No prior knowledge of Haskell and next to none now.
Why not give a try and see how it goes?
I second that. I know Haskell reasonably well by now (it's my #1 language for any project where I don't have a good reason to use something else) but I would consider most of my 267-line xmonad.hs to be little more than specifying configuration options that happen to be written in Haskell but whose meaning should be clear even to people without any knowledge of Haskell. You need to know more Haskell if you want to do stuff that's currently not in core xmonad or in the quite extensive xmonadcontrib extension library (that's why my xmonad.hs is so long). But then, since you say Haskell is high on your list of languages to learn, once you reach the point that you'd be interested in a feature that's currently not there, trying to implement this feature may just be the right kind of toy project to get your feet wet and dig a little deeper into the language. One thing that I can see to be a bit of a challenge is to get the types of things in your configuration file right. When I started using xmonad, I was constantly bitten by trying to bind pure functions that manipulate the window list of a workspace to a key, while a key can only be bound to an action in the X monad. However, if you run into any issues like that, there's always the mailing list ;) and it doesn't take too long to get a hang of it. I came to xmonad from awesome 3 years ago. I was quite hooked on awesome back then but had enough when it segfaulted on me when working to meet a conference deadline. So I was looking for something more stable and with similar functionality, found xmonad, and it didn't crash on me once in these 3 years. The Haskell compiler being so anal about lots of things, including types checking out, is I think a big part of why xmonad is so stable. Cheers, Norbert
I don't know Haskell very well at all. Although I am a developer (mostly
Python and Java). I find Haskell's syntax annoyingly confusing. However, I
have a pretty extensive and very customized xmonad.hs file. I was able to
create it by reading documentation, and asking the xmonad mailing list many
many specific questions. And the investment has been well worth it. The
community around xmonad is fantastic. It's really active, and very
responsive and supportive.
I won't lie, it does take some time and effort, but I was able to get xmonad
to work _exactly_ the way I want to.
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 21:22, Norbert Zeh
On 2011-09-07 17:01:55, serialhex wrote:
my Q is: how much haskell do i need to know to use it effectively? at
moment i am pre-alpha grasshopper status in my haskell coding skills, (i know haskell exists and is high on my list of languages to learn)
Allan Wind [2011.09.07 1741 -0400]: the though i
don't want to have to become a haskell guru in order to be able to use xmonad. so really, what's the learning curve like to start using xmonad?
It depends what you want to do, of course.
I am happy with my 19 line configuration file constructed by reviewing the excellent documentation and I think a couple of web searches. No prior knowledge of Haskell and next to none now.
Why not give a try and see how it goes?
I second that. I know Haskell reasonably well by now (it's my #1 language for any project where I don't have a good reason to use something else) but I would consider most of my 267-line xmonad.hs to be little more than specifying configuration options that happen to be written in Haskell but whose meaning should be clear even to people without any knowledge of Haskell.
You need to know more Haskell if you want to do stuff that's currently not in core xmonad or in the quite extensive xmonadcontrib extension library (that's why my xmonad.hs is so long). But then, since you say Haskell is high on your list of languages to learn, once you reach the point that you'd be interested in a feature that's currently not there, trying to implement this feature may just be the right kind of toy project to get your feet wet and dig a little deeper into the language.
One thing that I can see to be a bit of a challenge is to get the types of things in your configuration file right. When I started using xmonad, I was constantly bitten by trying to bind pure functions that manipulate the window list of a workspace to a key, while a key can only be bound to an action in the X monad. However, if you run into any issues like that, there's always the mailing list ;) and it doesn't take too long to get a hang of it.
I came to xmonad from awesome 3 years ago. I was quite hooked on awesome back then but had enough when it segfaulted on me when working to meet a conference deadline. So I was looking for something more stable and with similar functionality, found xmonad, and it didn't crash on me once in these 3 years. The Haskell compiler being so anal about lots of things, including types checking out, is I think a big part of why xmonad is so stable.
Cheers, Norbert
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--
*Eyal Erez <**oneself@gmail.com*
participants (4)
-
Allan Wind -
Eyal Erez -
Norbert Zeh -
serialhex