My impressions so far, to whom may concern:

I read a bit of http://haskell.org/ and from 
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/index.html also downloaded and installed GHC 
(400+ MB installed which I find great) but.... no IDE, to make libraries 
and .dll u need this thing (can't remember the name) that need this 
other thing (Cywin) to emulate a Linux enviroment and get compiled so it 
can be used and the 'darcs' thing to do a kind of repository and the 
other thing to do documentation...

I think all of them are goo ideas, what I don't like it is the PIA of 
learn how to compile them, compile them, learn how to use it SEPARATELY 
and finally start to gather all the DISPERSE tutorials and find what 
BROKEN links doesn't show to stat learning the language. Which is not as 
easy to read for non-experienced programmers, even the intro text said 
it is, I understood better Rubi and Python (a Fibonacci example), wtf! 
I'm not saying is hard but is not simple nor obvious, is something in 
the middle I think. No doubt it's what I'm looking for in a language, 
simple yet powerfull, but u need to go deep into it to learn how to make 
fast and/or small .exe files that can compete with C.

In short: is a PIA that is worth suffering it, so I'm not going to quit, 
I'm going to continue reading and searching and downloading and 
searching some more other peaces as I need them along. I see this 
project has come a long way for a freeware, powerful, very smart, 
programming language but ir really needs to put things together (IDE, 
GHC, the .dll/libraries making thing, doc making thing and darcs in a 
funtional package ALREADY COMPILED) and have better support (too much 
disperse info and broken links).

Any advise would be VERY WELCOME, thx for ur time.

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Saul Luizaga <sau### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> no IDE, to make libraries
> and .dll u need this thing

Haskell is a language and they provide a reference implementation in the form of
a compiler, plus organized repositories of useful libs.  You choose to
write-compile-debug it in whatever you like best, be it notepad, emacs or
Eclipse, which are outside the scope of the project.  They don't have the
resources of Microsoft to bundle it together with an IDE and deep bindings to
native OS APIs...

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Saul Luizaga wrote:

> I read a bit of http://haskell.org/

I'm surprised that alone didn't scare you off! ;-)

> also downloaded and installed GHC 
> (400+ MB installed which I find great)

It comes with lots of libraries. (Plus their documentation.)

I'm guessing you've got the brand new 6.10.1 release, which is 
significantly larger than previous releases, because it comes with the 
new Data Parallel Haskell library, plus the document generation tool 
[which used to be a seperate download].

AFAIK, when you install a C compiler, you don't get OpenGL bindings, a 
parser library, 4 seperate multithreading tools, a set of container 
libraries, graph theory libraries...

> but.... no IDE

No, there isn't.

There used to be a Haskell plugin for something called "Eclipse", but 
it's suffering from bitrot ATM.

> to make libraries 
> and .dll u need this thing (can't remember the name) that need this 
> other thing (Cywin) to emulate a Linux enviroment and get compiled so it 
> can be used and the 'darcs' thing to do a kind of repository and the 
> other thing to do documentation...

Ah yes... The Windows version of GHC actually uses the Cygwin POSIX 
emulator. It also uses GCC (as in, the GNU C compiler), GAS (the GNU 
assembler), and the Linux "ld" tool. And it uses Perl.exe. (??!)

Having just said all that, you shouldn't actually need to install Cygwin 
just to compile pure Haskell libraries from source. I've never needed to.

I'm not sure if building DLLs is actually supported ATM... I know 
they're working on it, but I don't know if it's functional right now.

Darcs is a source control system (like CVS is). It's very popular for 
Haskell projects, since it's written in Haskell. Some programs and 
libraries are distributed as "use Darcs to download the current souce 
repository, and then compile it". Others are packaged and distributed on 
Hackage, and you need to use Cabal to build those. (Cabal being 
Haskell's home-grown package manager. Apparently they also translate 
packages to various native Linux package formats too.)

> I think all of them are goo ideas, what I don't like it is the PIA of 
> learn how to compile them, compile them, learn how to use it SEPARATELY 
> and finally start to gather all the DISPERSE tutorials and find what 
> BROKEN links doesn't show to stat learning the language. Which is not as 
> easy to read for non-experienced programmers, even the intro text said 
> it is, I understood better Rubi and Python (a Fibonacci example), wtf! 

Ah yes, Haskell's legendary documentation. It's scattered all over the 
place, half of it is published as academic papers that you and I can't 
access, much of it is written for compiler designers and academics 
rather than actual *programmers* who just want to know how to use the 
thing, and lots of stuff isn't documented _at all_.

For example, laziness can be a bad thing. This is highly non-obvious, 
and it ISN'T EXPLAINED ANYWHERE. If you pop into the IRC channel and ask 
about it, somebody will explain it. But then it's *still* not written 
down for the next newbie who wants to know. It's sort of an oral 
tradition; there are many "well known" techniques, but nobody has 
written any of this stuff down anywhere, making it infuriatingly hard to 
learn about this stuff.

> I'm not saying is hard but is not simple nor obvious, is something in 
> the middle I think. No doubt it's what I'm looking for in a language, 
> simple yet powerfull, but u need to go deep into it to learn how to make 
> fast and/or small .exe files that can compete with C.

...which neatly demonstrates my point. Programs compiled with GHC 
contain C debugging symbols by default - even though these are 
completely useless in a *Haskell* program. By using a special 
command-line switch, you can "strip" the symbols, making a typical 
program about 200KB smaller. But this isn't written down anywhere; I 
found out about it by chatting to people on IRC.

And yes, Haskell is designed for writing complex algorithms easily. If 
you want *speed*, it's very non-obvious how to do this. There is some 
scattered documentation about it, but currently the most expedient 
method is to post the source code and ask Don to look at it for you. ;-)

> In short: is a PIA that is worth suffering.

That pretty much sums it up, yeah.

FWIW, getting libraries and stuff to work tends to be far easier on 
Linux. (E.g., there are packages which require Automake and Bash scripts 
as part of their build process... Because, *obviously*, all coding 
happens on Linux, right? Right??) Us Windows users tend to be the poor 
relations; even Mac OS has better support!

> I'm going to continue reading and searching and downloading and 
> searching some more other peaces as I need them along.

You might try looking through this:

http://book.realworldhaskell.org/

It's the website for a book that just got released and is meant to 
explain all this stuff - not just the language syntax, but how to work 
the compiler, what the best coding strategies are, etc.

I must say, I was very excited about this book, but having actually read 
it now it's out, I'm dissapointed. Still, it's a single *large*, 
coherant body of information, all in one place. That's a step in the 
right direction...

> I see this 
> project has come a long way for a freeware, powerful, very smart, 
> programming language

The *language* is fantastic! It's the other stuff that needs to go with 
a language, such as...

> but ir really needs to put things together (IDE, 
> GHC, the .dll/libraries making thing, doc making thing and darcs in a 
> funtional package ALREADY COMPILED) and have better support (too much 
> disperse info and broken links).

...exactly.

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>> but.... no IDE
> 
> No, there isn't.

...unless you count the "Haskell mode" for emacs. :-P

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> AFAIK, when you install a C compiler, you don't get OpenGL bindings,

  It depends on the C compiler. Some come bundled with OpenGL libraries.

> a parser library, 4 seperate multithreading tools, a set of container
> libraries, graph theory libraries...

  C++ is a bit better in this regard. Just because of the C++ standard,
compilers have to come with tons of libraries. And often they come with
tons of third-party libraries as well (eg. the boost library collection
is usually bundled with most linux systems alongside gcc).

  I think one of Haskell's major problems is that nobody has made an
advanced compiler for Windows, and the existing Haskell compilers only
rely on inconvenient cygwin ports.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> AFAIK, when you install a C compiler, you don't get OpenGL bindings,
> 
>   It depends on the C compiler. Some come bundled with OpenGL libraries.
> 
>> a parser library, 4 seperate multithreading tools, a set of container
>> libraries, graph theory libraries...
> 
>   C++ is a bit better in this regard. Just because of the C++ standard,
> compilers have to come with tons of libraries. And often they come with
> tons of third-party libraries as well (eg. the boost library collection
> is usually bundled with most linux systems alongside gcc).

Certainly the C++ containers library seems quite nice.

The thing is, the collection of libraries that come with GHC is... 
pretty random, actually. E.g., there's a library for OpenGL, but there's 
no GUI library (and hence no way to *use* OpenGL).

>   I think one of Haskell's major problems is that nobody has made an
> advanced compiler for Windows, and the existing Haskell compilers only
> rely on inconvenient cygwin ports.

Well, the Windows version of GHC is maintained and tested by the core 
GHC development team. (And, for example, it comes with bindings to the 
Win32 API - incomplete though it is.) And the Cygwin thing isn't as 
inconvenient as it sounds... but yeah, this really needs to change.

Apparently a long-term goal is to remove the C compiler completely, but 
the internal code generator needs improving first. It's a long-term 
project that they've been working on for years, but there's no much 
visibly happening at the surface on this particular work item.

Of course, this is an open-source project. I suppose if it annoys me so 
much, I should go fix it myself.

I mean, as if I could *ever* do something like that...

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Warp escreveu:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> AFAIK, when you install a C compiler, you don't get OpenGL bindings,
> 
>   It depends on the C compiler. Some come bundled with OpenGL libraries.
> 
>> a parser library, 4 seperate multithreading tools, a set of container
>> libraries, graph theory libraries...
> 
>   C++ is a bit better in this regard. Just because of the C++ standard,
> compilers have to come with tons of libraries.

Why should a compiler project package together other project's 
libraries, specially ones that are likely to be found on the host system?

The situation with Haskell is different:  it doesn't come with "opengl 
lib", it comes with a Haskell binding to opengl. C/C++ doesn't need 
this, as it's perfectly fine calling the lib functions in the very same 
syntax and calling conventions they were written in.

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Thx for the advise, I see I'm not alone in my POV (Point of View) and I 
also see my common sesnse isn't far from the truth as I thought.

I thank everyone who cared on guiding me in this long Haskell road I 
just started to crawl.

I have read in the Haskell site that the best way to learn Haskell is 
from a book, so I've downloaded a couple (don't ask from where since 
those are illegal ways, I have to, my salary is 180$us a month, I hope u 
can understand if not well, I have no other choice) also Haskell98, the 
most recent manual and other .pdf files and in other formats.

Also I've come aware of Leksah and how to COMPILE(darn) it. The screen 
shots were from a Linux version (how convenient... for them! :D ).

I hope Haskell gets better soon, it has a SPECTACULAR FUTURE.

Well, I think I can raw my boat alone from here, again I thank you for 
ur help. God bless you all.

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"Saul Luizaga" <sau### [at] netscapenet> wrote

> I have read in the Haskell site that the best way to learn Haskell is
> from a book, so I've downloaded a couple (don't ask from where since
> those are illegal ways,

[...]

>God bless you all.

To each his own, but no matter how many times I see or hear about the
apparently happy coexistence of blatantly conflicting ideologies within
people's minds, I cannot but grin.

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somebody wrote:
> To each his own, but no matter how many times I see or hear about the
> apparently happy coexistence of blatantly conflicting ideologies within
> people's minds, I cannot but grin.

To each his own, but no matter how many times I hear monotheists assume that 
everyone referring to god must intend that monotheist's interpretation of 
their own god's holy scriptures, I have to grimace.

Me, I think Pan and Loki would both be proud.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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