[Haskell-beginners] haskell platform

[Brian Sammon]

On Mon, 11 Jan 2016 18:18:42 -0500
DJ <jakep at arqux.com> wrote:

> Why is the Haskell Platform for linux (or my distro anyway) stuck at 
> 2013? I see that ghc is several versions newer than what comes with 
> Haskell Platform. That seems like a rather severe lag.
> 
> Why is that? Does it matter?

Seeing as nobody has addressed the second question (Does it matter) here, I'll put my two cents in.
I've only been using haskell for a few months, on Debian Stable, with the GHC 7.6.3 that comes with Debian Stable.  In my limited experience, (especially as regards my learning process), it hasn't much mattered. 
(Actually, if anything, occasionally it seemed it wasn't old enough -- sometimes googling an issue would turn up articles referencing GHC 6)

But I'd be interested in hearing other opinions.

P.S.  As a Debian user/enthusiast, I haven't seen any need for bothering with Platform or Stack--dpkg/apt got everything (I didn't bother with the "haskell-platform" meta-packages) installed pretty straightforwardly.