[Haskell-cafe] What features should an (fictitious) IDE for Haskell have?

[André Popovitch]

One feature I've always wanted would be able to "manually inline" a
function. For example, if I have

    foo a = a + a
    bar = foo 3

I'd like to be able to right-click on the invocation of `foo` and select
some option to inline it, rewriting the file to read

    foo a = a + a
    bar = 3 + 3

I think this would make it simple to dive into an abstraction to see what's
really going on. For example, imagine a new user is confused by this
expression:

   Just 3 >> Just 4

They could right-click on `>>` to see that it is identical to:

    case Just 3 of
        Just _ -> Just 4
        Nothing -> Nothing


Which would allow them to easily see that this expression will always
evaluate to "Just 4" (and hopefully simplify it). Enlightened, they could
then hit ctrl-z to revert the code to its original state.

Haskell's purity and laziness makes it one of the only mainstream languages
where equational reasoning is really possible, so this feature would play
on Haskell's strengths and provide a feature that couldn't be replicated in
other languages' IDEs. It would also allow new users to more easily dive in
and understand certain abstractions (although how it would work in many
cases would be hard to determine).

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 3:35 PM Gueven Bay via Haskell-Cafe <
haskell-cafe at haskell.org> wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Imagine that you can decide what functionality and features an
> Integrated Development Environment for Haskell should get. You can
> make this IDE with your wishlist similar in power as other IDEs for
> Java for example.
>
> Now list as many features as you can, what would make the life of a
> Haskell developer as comfortable as possible!?
>
> I am dying to know how this list of features at the end (of this
> thread) will look like.
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-- 
Andre Popovitch
989 627 4376
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