Talk:From a newbie

well, although the page opener hopefully has what s/he came for,... hawiki had pages for newbies! lots! haskellwiki homepage should probably have a link to a "new comer portal".

Pages for newbies? I must be blind... MathematicalOrchid 13:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You have every right to be confused. You see, there was an old Haskell Wiki, cleverly named HaWiki, and yes, there were pages for newbies, like http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellNewbie, http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/LearningHaskell, http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/FrequentlyAskedQuestions, and many more. Care to port them to the current wiki? --Pirated Dreams 23:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

from HaskellWiki:Copyright, Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining this work (the "Work"), to deal in the Work without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Work, and to permit persons to whom the Work is furnished to do so.

so I am going to rework the whole thing sometime. beware. --Pirated Dreams 00:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

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Responses

Good luck

Do you know about the newsgroup comp.lang.haskell?

I've personally found the community to be very helpful. The documentation can be lacking at times, but the IRC channel and mailing list do make up for the gap a lot. Hopefully the many notes and tutorials scattered throughout the web will flesh out and improve over time. In the meantime, I would recommend moving the discussion to a more appropriate medium, like the Haskell Café mailing list.

In any case, best of luck with Haskell. If you eventually find answers to your questions, you could consider paving the way for future newbies by improving the pre-existing tutorials or writing one of your own. Find your niche! -- kowey 00:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The Orchid Speaks

Well, I got noticed anyway. That's something.

I still have quite a number of unanswered questions - but I think we all agree the wiki isn't a great way to deal with these. Where would be the best place to take this discussion to?

MathematicalOrchid 12:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say Haskell Café mailing list for longish discussions, or the IRC channel for more impromptu one-off questions (and general Haskell chat). Enjoy!

Really, we all like Haskell very much, but as you surely understand, when people participate in these discussions, they are either procrastinating, or using their free time. Either way, it's supposed to be fun :-D . What help you get often comes from sheer enthusiasm overriding better judgement [e.g. "I really ought to be writing that thesis instead of looking at IRC"]. So take it easy and don't worry so much about having your questions go unanswered. Maybe it's a bad time (everybody is exercising restraint), and you should try again later. Or maybe people think it'd be easier to do a little Google-fu. If you are lucky and you do spark a discussion, all the better. Like I said, enjoy!

Best, -- kowey 13:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

So I'm left more or less where I started - I can hang out an in IRC channel where nobody speaks, or I can post to an email list and hope that in amongst the 50,000,000 other unrelated messages somebody will be able to follow the thread of what I'm saying…

Ah well, I guess I'll have to go back to figuring stuff out by myself.

MathematicalOrchid 09:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The channel is active and the mailing list helpful. I would at least give it a try before discounting it like that. On the other hand, figuring things out yourself is also a fine way to learn. Happy hacking, -- kowey 10:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe I'll give comp.lang.haskell a try. (If I can figure out how to get USENET access...) Figuring stuff out on your own is one thing, but trying to work out what undocumented libraries do without any help isn't easy. (Especially in a language as flexible as Haskell. Man, can you imagine what would happen if somebody held an Obfuscated Haskell Contest?!) MathematicalOrchid 13:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

There are Obfuscated Haskell code around. Honestly, my experience with the IRC channel is quite the opposite. True, nobody speaks. Most of the time. That's a good thing. Whenever you speak, you are more or less guaranteed to be heard. I think the IRC channel is precisely what you are looking for. It's one of the most underrated Haskell resources around. I've been talking my head of about utter nonsense lately, but nobody seems to mind. Each and every one of my stupid questions and proposals where properly addressed and corrected. Just make a noise there, you'll see. Cheers. --Pirated Dreams 23:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

To follow up on this, there actually is an obfuscated Haskell contest :-) -- kowey 23:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)