[Haskell-cafe] [haskell-cafe] Some reflections on Haskell

[wren ng thornton]

On 2/14/12 11:41 AM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
> On 02/14/2012 04:13 PM, Doug McIlroy wrote:
>> Nevertheless, I share Jardine's concern about the central problem.
>> It is hard to find one's way in this ecosystem. It needn't be,
>> as Java illustrates.
>
> As a professional Java developer this sounds really strange, but maybe I
> just haven't found it yet.
>
> Do you mean to suggest that it's easy to choose between e.g. Spring,
> Guice, etc., the umpteen OSGi containers, the several logging
> frameworks, etc. etc. etc.?

I'm not sure I'd call myself a "professional" Java programmer ---though 
I've been paid for writing Java on numerous occasions--- but I'm with 
Bardur.

The JavaDocs for the built-in libraries that come with Java are indeed 
excellent. However, once you move out of the built-in ecosystem and 
start using other people's projects, the quality of documentation 
degenerates rapidly. I can't recall how many opensource projects I've 
used for which the only thing provided by JavaDoc is the type signatures 
it could scrape off the code.

While the documentation of Hackage projects could certainly be improved, 
on the whole I find it's much better than what you get from non-core 
packages for Java. The one big thing I think Hackage needs is better 
top-level organization. Right now it's hard to browse and find new 
packages for some topic you're interested in, in part because we're 
blessed with so many packages, and in part because some packages are 
properly considered as a group (e.g., Yesod, Kmett's replacement for 
category-extras,...) but this isn't well-captured by the current system.

-- 
Live well,
~wren