[Haskell-cafe] Retrospective on 2008?

[Don Stewart]

I've been kicking the idea around of a 2008 retrospective. How did we do
this year? After all, it has been a dramatic growth period (we're close
to 600 people a day in #haskell now, for example, and many new faces!)

Some ideas:

    * 10 best new libraries
    * 10 best new apps
    * 10 most influential blog posts
    * best new library by category

Determing this is an interesting task. To start with, I scanned hackage.
Some stats:

    * Hackage currently holds 914 applications and libraries.
    * 601 of them were released on Hackage this year:

        http://galois.com/~dons/tmp/new-releases-2008.txt

Which is rather impressive, I have to say. We're getting better at the
production of new libraries and apps (I imagine all the releases are
feeding into new apps and libs in new areas not easily reachable
before).

The last couple of months, we're averaging around 10 uploads a day, in
fact. You can see the upload growth here, 

        http://galois.com/~dons/images/hackage-daily-graph.png

We've fundamentally transformed the suitability of Haskell and GHC in a
range of domains through the production of these apps and libraries.

Well done everyone!

Now, as for determining which new things make the top 10, a chance to
apply some heuristics? (Most voted on? Most downloaded? Most depended
upon by other things?).

Any thoughts? Anyone have their own top 10 list? Or other key events of
the year?

-- Don