[Haskell-cafe] When did it become so hard to install Haskell onWindows?

[Richard O'Keefe]

Dear Anthony, I was able to install 'stack' on Windows in minutes with
no PowerShell required.
And 'stack ghci' pulled in ghci.
It doesn't *have* to be hard, even for GHC.

On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 at 12:24, Anthony Clayden
<anthony_clayden at clear.net.nz> wrote:
>
> Remember GHC's motto is 'avoid success at all costs'. Then naturally it is prohibitively difficult to get to use GHC.
>
> For students/people who you want to encourage to love Haskell, especially on Windows,
> I'm astonished you're not using Hugs, especially WinHugs (2-click install).
> Despite being over a dozen years unsupported it is still orders-of-magnitude more friendly than GHC,
>  and has plenty of functionality (in Hugsmode) for undergraduate level.
> What's more Haskell from the intro texts just works on it;
> whereas GHC throws all sorts of obscure advanced type errors.
>
> I don't think powershell is a 'standard tool'. I use mostly Windows machines,
> I'm aware of powershell, I've never used it.
>
> Chocolatey is an abhorence. Fortunately I've never had to use it;
> I don't know why GHC would inflict it on anybody.
>
> Increasingly, GHC HQ is a cult/elite that doesn't want any new members.
> The difficulties in trying to use GHC just show how exclusive it has become.
>
>
>
> AntC
>
> > I appreciate that these things are standard tools for Windows
> developers, but it's worth noting how much harder it can make things
> for completely new people (either new developers or new to Windows).
>
> > At the start of the year, I prepared install instructions for university
> students who would be using Haskell as part of a first year CS
> course. We needed to use GHC 8.6.5 because certain libraries were not
> available for GHC 8.8.x (their base upper bounds hadn't updated, which
> ruled out haskell-dev), and tried to use Chocolatey as an experiment.
>
> > It was remarkably tough to get students set up on their own machines. I
> was planning on recommending the Haskell Platform installer for Semester
> 2 this year, and am disappointed to find that it no longer exists.
>
> > If it becomes too hard for students to install Haskell on their own
> Windows machines, it may become too hard for us to use Haskell as an
> educational tool, and I'd consider that a tragedy.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to:
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
> Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.