the real world of Haskell books (Re: [Haskell-cafe] Online Real World Haskell, problem with Sqlite3 chapters)

[Duncan Coutts]

On Fri, 2008-09-05 at 13:04 +0100, Claus Reinke wrote:
> Now that is "real world" - problems even before release!-)
> 
> Seriously, though, what is the RWH authors' plan for tackling
> the eternal frustration of Haskell book authors, a moving target?
> 
> There used to be a time when one could guess the poster's
> Haskell book from their question topics:
> 
>     - 'HGL' doesn't work: Hudak's book
>     - 'fromInt' issues: Thompson's book
> 
> The problem arises because the books survive far longer than
> the version of the code base they refer to. The only way to reduce 
> this friction has been to avoid fast-changing details, eg, focussing 
> on programming, problem solving, reasoning (Hutton, Thompson,
> Bird), and even that isn't safe ('n+k', 'fromInt',..). Neither is 
> keeping a separate library - 'SOEGraphics' has been revived 
> several times, on different GUI/graphic libs, even different Haskell
> implementations, but has always fallen prey to bitrot again.

There are currently two independent working implementations
of SOEGraphics on GUI libs that are maintained. I think it'll probably
be ok.

Duncan