[Haskell-cafe] ANN: #haskell-in-depth IRC channel

[Philippa Cowderoy]

Hi folks. As I've been daft enough to get a few things rolling, it looks
like it's fallen on me to announce the new IRC channel,
#haskell-in-depth.

#haskell has been a roaring success over the last few years, as Don has
repeatedly pointed out. Unfortunately that roar is starting to make it
hard for some to participate - there's so much traffic that it can be
difficult to fit an additional conversation in. We're starting to hit
the limits as to how far one channel can take us, and that means we need
to explore ways to divide up traffic.

Actually, this isn't entirely new - a number of years ago now,
#haskell-blah was formed as a space for off-topic (and sometimes
less-than-worksafe) conversation among #haskell regulars. We also
created #haskell-overflow, but it doesn't see much use except among some
of the cabal implementors because it's hard to know when to take the
conversation you're currently in to -overflow.

We need channels that people start their conversations in, not ones to
send people to! So we're trying a space for in-depth discussion. The new
channel is open to everyone, just like #haskell. But just as we're
hoping for certain kinds of discussion, there're others we want to
avoid. If you need to know how to use monads so you can do IO,
#haskell-in-depth isn't the place. On the other hand, if you want to
discuss how Haskell's monads compare to the category theory or what the
category theory can tell us about how individual monads relate to the
language as a whole, -in-depth is a good place! In particular, we're
hoping that the kind of category theory discussions that give the
mistaken impression you actually need to know CT will increasingly live
in #haskell-in-depth.

We're not after a theory channel though - architectural discussion,
compiler implementation, possible type system extensions, library
design, all are good subjects.

Anyway, I shouldn't ramble on for too long here - #haskell-in-depth is
open for business and we look forward to seeing you there!

-- 
Philippa Cowderoy <flippa at flippac.org>