[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell tutorial for pseudo users?

[Jonathan Cast]

On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 08:30 +0100, Achim Schneider wrote:
> Jonathan Cast <jonathanccast at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 20:55 +0000, Andrew Coppin wrote:
> > > Deniz Dogan wrote:
> > > > Learn You a Haskell for Great Good (http://learnyouahaskell.com/)
> > > 
> > > Mmm, interesting.
> > > 
> > > Does anybody else think it would be neat if GHCi really did
> > > colourise your input like that?
> > 
> > Bleah.  More terminal hacking to break and/or slow Emacs to a crawl?
> > No thanks.
> > 
> A while ago, I'd say that emacs looks like a decent operating system,
> sadly lacking a decent editor.

I always wonder how many people who say that have actually *tried*
Emacs' editor.

> Now it seems that it's even lacking a
> decent terminal.

Actually, I think the issue is just that Emacs' ANSI color parsing code
is effectively O(n^2); when I really, really need colored output I run
the command in a separate window (with B&W output) and switch major
modes.

Emacs' terminal is also lacking all the modern conveniences, like
addressable cursors and builtin line-editing designed for 1970s printing
terminals and practically no searching capabilities.  Alternatively, you
could say it's incompatible with modern Unix's biggest mistakes and
worst legacy issues.

> I'm really not sure what to make of all that: Would
> you recommend using it?

Of course.  It sucks the least of any solution I've tried.  Barely.

> Eternal flamewars cast aside, what about integrating such a thing into
> yi? Yi has the advantage of working for both masochists _and_ efficient
> typists.

Yi has a terminal?  Maybe I should try it again.

jcc