[Haskell] #haskell IRC channel reaches 600 users

[Don Stewart]

A small announcement :)

7 years after its inception, under the guiding hand of Shae Erisson (aka
shapr), the #haskell IRC channel[1] on freenode has reached 600
concurrent users! It's now in the top 3 language channels by size.

To chart the growth, we can note that the channel was founded in late
2001, and had slow growth till 2006, reaching 200 users in January of
that year. Since then growth in the user base has been far more rapid,
reaching 300 users in Dec 2006, 400 users in August 2007, 500 users
by July 2008, and 600 on January 2, 2009.

This puts the channel at the 7th largest community of the 7000 freenode
channels, and in the top 3 language communities. For comparision, a
sample of the state of the other language communities, with comments
comapred to their status a year ago:

   #php         612
   #python      604

 > #haskell     602 -- up 4

   ##c++        558
   ##c          506 -- down 1
   #perl        502 -- down 3
   #ruby-lang   288 -- down
   #lisp        264
   ##javascript 241
   #erlang      146 -- unchanged
   #perl6       129 -- unchanged
   #scheme      123 -- down
   #lua         102 -- unchanged
   #clojure      78
   #ocaml        70 -- unchanged

You can see the growth of the channel over here:

    http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel

If you've not dropped by the channel yet, feel free to come and chat,
and toss around some lambdas! :)

Cheers,
    Don