IRC channel
Internet Relay Chat is a worldwide text chat service with many thousands of users among various irc networks.
The Freenode IRC network has a #haskell channel, as of November 2005, we average well over 220 people, and we have some excellent discussions. As of 2006-11 our high water mark is 265 unique clients, including Lambdabot.
Currently we have about half newbies learning from the experienced half, but any Haskell related conversation is welcome.
The IRC channel can be an excellent place to learn more about Haskell, and to just keep in the loop on new things in the Haskell world. Many new developments in the Haskell world first appear on the irc channel.
Principles
The #haskell channel is a friendly, welcoming place to hang out, teach and learn.
The goal of #haskell is to encourage learning and discussion of Haskell, functional programming, and programming in general. As part of this we welcome newbies, and encourage teaching of the language.
Part of the #haskell success comes from the approach that the community is quite tight knit -- we know each other -- it's not just a homework channel. As a result, many collaborative projects have arisen between #haskell citizens.
History
The #haskell channel appeared in the late 90s, and really got going in early 2001, with the help of Shae Erisson (aka shapr). At least a year earlier, in 2000, Julian Assange created irc.haskell.org, it seems not to have flourished.
A fairly extensive analysis of the traffic on #haskell over the years is kept here
Getting there
If you point your irc client to chat.freenode.net and then join the #haskell channel, you'll be there.
Other Haskell channels
In addition to the main Haskell channel there are also:
- #haskell.de - German speakers
- #haskell.es - Spanish speakers
- #haskell.fi - Finnish speakers
- #haskell.fr - French speakers
- #haskell.it - Italian speakers
- #haskell.jp - Japenese speakers
- #haskell.se - Swedish speakers
- #haskell_ru - Russian speakers
- #haskell-overflow - Overflow conversations
- #haskell-blah - Haskell people talking about anything except Haskell itself
- #gentoo-haskell - Gentoo/Linux specific Haskell conversations
- #darcs - Darcs revision control channel (written in Haskell)
- #perl6 - Perl 6 development (plenty of Haskell chat there too)