[Haskell-cafe] Categorized Weaknesses from the State of Haskell 2011 Survey

[A.M.]

On Sep 13, 2011, at 7:38 PM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> 
>> One thing I am puzzled about, is just how extremely difficult it must
>> be, to click on "Detailed documentation of the HaXml APIs" from the
>> HaXml homepage, look for a moment until you see
>> "Text.XML.HaXml.Parse" in the list of modules, click on it, and find,
>> right at the top of the page, a function that parses a String into an
>> XML document tree.
> 
> As someone who just wants to parse an XML file, here's what happens.
> First, I click on the API docs. I'm presented with a list:
> 
>    * Text
>          o XML
>                + Text.XML.HaXml
>                      # Text.XML.HaXml.ByteStringPP
>                      # Text.XML.HaXml.Combinators
>                      # DtdToHaskell
>                            * Text.XML.HaXml.DtdToHaskell.Convert
>     

<snip>

I think you make an important point here. As a beginner myself, I am often surprised by the sparse first impression of modules that hackage offers. To a beginner, the one sentence introduction often using domain-specific language is thwarting. Compare hackage to CPAN or Sphinx documentation which present pages of examples covering all programmer-visible interfaces and the difference is clear: hackage is a module repository first and a documentation browser last.

Cheers,
M