"Excuse me, I think this i my stop..." - Resigning from the Platform

[Gershom B]

Thanks Mark for all your work over the years! Haskell has the adoption it does today in no small part because of your work in making sure it has been consistently easy to install over a range of systems. You’ve put many years and long hours into the work you’ve done as release manager, and we all appreciate it.

I certainly suspect the applicatipocalypse is less around-the-bend than you perhaps prophesy (sorry, couldn’t resist). But as they say, horses for courses. I look forward to catching up with you at those meetups and conferences.

Everyone else: I’m happy to step in for the immediate time being as release manager to bring to completion the minimal-platform-with-cabal-and-stack plans (aka “Improving the Get Haskell Experience” proposal). I’ve already started to do so a very tiny bit, helping with a new OS X release to help with compatibility with El Capitan. I also want to note that lots of contributions lately have been coming courtesy of  Randy Polen and Erik Rantapaa in particular, so we have some great resources to build on.

Especially medium term and long term more volunteers will be very welcome (I certainly can’t imagine remaining “Mr. Platform” for as many tireless years as Mark has). A fair amount of the work I plan to spend on platform stuff in the immediate future will be to take the good work Mark has done in making easier the platform build and release process and further document it. The end goal should be that, at least for the foreseeable future, the release manager job should become straightforward and demystified enough that passing the baton becomes easier yet.

If you have experience with installers in either the Windows or Mac world and would like to get involved (maybe just as a voice of experience and wisdom) please reach out to me and let me know. Alternately, if you have a friend with such experience, and you think you could convince them to lend a hand, perhaps suggest to them that they reach out to me :-P. Also, if you have either a range of boxes (or hardware with images of different flavors of systems) and some time to act as a tester — please reach out as well. A designated team of installer-testers would be a good thing as well.

Best,
Gershom




On October 12, 2015 at 11:09:12 PM, Mark Lentczner (mark.lentczner at gmail.com) wrote:
> I think this is the right time for me to exit:
>  
> The truth is, I still can't bring myself to use a version of Haskell post
> the Foldable-Traversable-aPocalypse, let alone some future Haskell after
> the changes now in the works. My personal machines are all still 7.8. My
> personal projects are all pre-FTP. The Haskell I love to code in, the
> Haskell I'm passionate about, the Haskell I've advocated for real world
> use, and the Haskell I like to teach, is 7.8, pre-FTP.
>  
> It's not that I'm dead set against change and evolution in a language, or
> even breaking changes. But FTP and beyond are changes that have lost the
> balance that Haskell had between abstraction and clarity, between elaborate
> and practical engineering. I don't see any restraint going forward, so I'm
> getting off the train.
>  
> This puts me in an odd position with respect to Haskell Platform: I find
> myself building the Platform for a version of Haskell that I don't use.
> This isn't healthy for either the Platform or me. Hence, I'm resigning as
> release manager.
>  
> I am sad because I believed that Haskell's path to much wider adoption was
> within reach. Now, especially with the ramping up of the Haskell Prime
> committee, which seems preordained to codify FTP and beyond into standard,
> we are approaching our Algol 68 moment: Building a major language revision
> with less opportunity than it's predecessor.
>  
> I'll still see you 'round at meet-ups and conferences. I'll just be coding
> with an older accent.
>  
> - Mark "mzero" Lentczner
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