[Haskell-cafe] Building the community

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

>     *  Give tips on how to answer questions
>
>             + Ok. we can put up an article here. Some suggestions:
>                 - No questions are bad questions
>                 - Code should come with examples of how to run it
>                 - Solutions with unsafePerformIO should be discouraged (moreso ;)
>                 - Be polite! (we're good at this)

I'd say our worst feature is tending to give solutions which are not
"simple" Haskell, but make use of advanced features. When a beginner
asks a question, sometimes the answer requires GADT's, Template
Haskell, rank-2 types etc. However this is usually because they asked
the wrong question - thinking in an imperative frame of mind. Often it
would be better to peel back to the original problem, where the answer
is more likely to be pure neat Haskell.

I guess unsafePerformIO is just one instance of this.

Thanks

Neil