24 days of Hackage, 2015: day 24: conclusion and thanks

Dec 24, 2015 · 4 minute read · Comments
HaskellHackageReddit

Table of contents for the whole series

A table of contents is at the top of the article for day 1.

Day 24

(Reddit discussion)

Whew, it’s finally over, this “24 days of Hackage, 2015” project!

I never expected to do something like this, ever, and I am grateful to everyone who encouraged me while I was engaged in it. I enjoyed the quality of comments and corrections I got as well as links to related Haskell libraries.

Some closing thoughts:

My project goals

My goals for the project were simple at first (“show some stuff”), but quickly sharpened as I went along and became more explicit in my mind. Here are some:

• Provide running, tested code, not just snippets
• Make sure the code is reproducibly buildable, by using Stack and Stackage LTS as a basis
• Anticipate later updating of the articles in case of factual changes or library API changes
• Provide useful reference links to documentation and examples
• Write example code that, although necessarily limited, might inspire enough curiosity to look further
• Explain why I find something interesting, rather than just show it
• Make note of possible improvements, especially for human usability
• Discuss only libraries I have used, are starting to use, or intend to use in the future
• Try to reuse tasks and code from earlier posts in order to create more of a sense of progression and continuity

I hope that I have succeeded in accomplishing some of these goals. I know that because of time constraints, I had to cut corners where if I had time, I would have written much more text and written much more realistic code.

The Haskell ecosystem keeps growing

There a hundred other libraries I could have picked to mention along the way, some of which I’ve used, many of which I’ve heard good things about and never used (yet).

Some useful coverage of what’s been happening in Haskell:

• Gabriel Gonzalez’s State of the Haskell ecosystem
• Stephen Diehl’s reflections on Haskell in 2015
• Commercial Haskell group’s material in progress on intermediate Haskell

Other cool stuff I noticed

There is a blog series on solving Advent of Code using Haskell. I’ve deliberately not read this yet, because I might want to try Advent of Code myself sometime.

On writing

I don’t expect to do a “24 days of Hackage” again.

For one thing, it was exhausting, at a time of year when I ended up having to cancel most of my normal life in December to dedicate myself to the project! I did this project out of gratitude and love for a community that has provided me the tools to make my programming life more fun, productive, and just plain joyful, but I am relieved that it’s over and plan to just relax for the holidays.

I also decided that in future writing projects (about anything, not just Haskell-related), I would like more time to take a different pace, and write in more depth about topics, perhaps multi-part articles that assume a well-defined audience. I knew up front for “24 days” that I was providing “appetizers” here, and without knowing exactly which part of an undefined audience would find which appetizers useful. I would like to provide complete meals targeted toward well-defined audiences, with a preface for each article explaining what background I assume, with pointers to prerequisites as appropriate, and build up a web of interlinked information.

I have a general suggestion: how about if the Haskell community collaborated on a “module of the week” project, maybe even with the idea of incrementally building up some kind of mega-demo app showcasing Haskell that meaningfully incorporated many libraries and would be an example real world project that would be very useful for learners?

Meanwhile, I would like to encourage anyone who wants to write anything, however short or long, to go and do it. It’s a tremendous learning opportunity.

Conclusion

I’d like to thank Ollie again for having done the “24 days” in the past, putting out the word that he couldn’t do it this year, and encouraging me to take it up when I suggested maybe I could do something to contribute. Don’t forget, his “24 days” series are still up and valuable as reference.

Also, I was happy that the Haskell user group in Brazil has been translating, with my permission, my articles into Portuguese for their blog and use the articles as a basis for discussion and growing the local Haskell community!

All the code

All my code for my article series are at this GitHub repo.