[Haskell-cafe] #haskell irc channel reaches 400 users

[Donald Bruce Stewart]

A small announcement :)

5 1/2  years after its inception, under the guiding hand of Shae Erisson
(aka shapr), the #haskell IRC channel[1] on freenode has finally reached
400 users!

To chart the growth, we can note that the channel was founded 
in late 2001, and had slow growth till 2006, reaching 200 users in
January of that year. Since then growth in the user base has been far
more rapid, reaching 300 users in Dec 2006, and 400 users now, in August
2007.

This puts the channel at around the 13th largest community of the 5500
freenode channels. For comparision, a sample of the state of the other
language communities:

    #php         485
    #perl        472
    ##c++        457
    ##c          445
    #python      430
    #ruby-lang   420
     
  > #haskell     411

    #lisp        246
    ##java       236
    ##javascript 226
    #perl6       144
    #scheme      139
    #erlang      118
    #lua         105
    #ocaml        58

You can see the growth of the channel over here: 
    http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/irc

If you've not dropped by the channel yet, feel free to come and chat,
and toss around some lambdas! :)

Cheers,
  Don

1. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel