Inviting VSCode users to check out the preview release: ⏳ Changelog · Issue #2 · visortelle/hackage-ui · GitHub
Feedback is very appreciated.
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Is it available in VSCodium?
Is it available in VSCodium?
I have no idea.
You can check and if it’s not, provide me instructions on how to publish it for VSCodium.
This is really great, and I’ll definitely be using it! Very little feedback as yet, but will let you know.
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This will speed up my “code a little / hoogle a little” workflow tremendously! Thanks a ton for building this plugin!
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Thank you!
In case of any suggestions, put them here: VSCode Extension Feedback · Issue #11 · visortelle/hackage-ui · GitHub
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I’d just like to say that this extension is fantastic.
I have used it more than once while lecturing to direct students towards relevant documentation or to showcase the examples that exist in some of the better-documented parts of base.
Thank you for putting it together!
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I still use it regularly and it’s great. The fact that the small change of having hoogle be a little more accessible made me use it 10x more makes me wonder what other low hanging fruit there is in terms of tooling that would really improve the Haskell coding experience.
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I’m really glad you found it useful.
I see a lot lo of hanging fruits in the Haskell ecosystem.
Not only in terms of tooling, but also in packages.
It would be great to have resources to be able to continue picking them up. I’m working on it.
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Could you please share what you see? Gathering and prioritising a list of such low hanging fruits is extremely important to spread the knowledge how to to improve the ecosystem.
You could either share your list here in this comment thread, by opening an issue on my Tilapia repo, or somewhere else of your choosing.
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I can try to describe some of them.
I’m a Haskell newbie with a web development background.
When I try to talk about Haskell in web development with former colleagues, I almost always hear something like: “Haskell is a toy, pick Java Spring Boot and don’t be stupid”. I think such an attitude to the language is not a secret.
I found Haskell easy enough to learn it in a reasonable time to the point where you can make web APIs with Servant and Postgres or MongoDB.
I encounter problems when trying to work with not-so-popular databases. If I wouldn’t have a clear understanding of why I wanted to do Haskell at this stage I would have already quit it.
Haskell ecosystem needs much more developers to be able to maintain packages at a comparable level as let’s say Java.
In order to increase the number of developers, Haskell should solve commercial projects’ issues in a better way than other platforms to attract big enterprise users. It’s important to have more enterprises because only this category of clients can afford to spend enough resources to solve gaps in tools they use.
For enterprises, the long-term stability of a platform with a clear releases schedule is very important.
Recently funded GitHub - haskellfoundation/stability: Issues and proposals related to the HF Stability Working Group is trying to solve this issue. 
Commercial support is very important for many companies and if I understand it right, there is no such option for Haskell. Probably it has the sense to show that there are people in the community who would be able to fill this gap for money if needed. Register a company, create a website, and actively promote it. It won’t have clients from start, but the existence of such an option would help to pass one of important filters for corporate users.
OK, we still don’t have ready to use framework to take and use for enterprise or startup project. Under the word “framework” here I mean a set of libraries written in more-less consistent style and that work well together.
Such framework may be not too flexible, but I belive that web framework with “All batteries included. Don’t think too much, just take this and that.” approach is a main key for mass language adoption.
Ruby is a great success-story example here.
It’s important to have a strong leader who can help to develop a roadmap for such framework and help developers to follow it. I very much see Michael Snoyman in this role.
I read some Haskell Foundation’s discussions regarding hopes to attract volunteers. In my opinion, free volunteering won’t solve any problems. You can volunteer for a month or two, but most developers maybe want to help but are too tired after the day at the main job to contribute effectively.
I know people who are bored of working on enterprise projects at a primary job, want to contribute to open-source and learn new stuff.
Probably for Haskell Foundation it has the sense to hire 2-5 full-time contributors in relatively cheap locations to live like Poland, Georgia some Asia countres, and others where you can live quite well for 1000-1500$ netto per month. 
I’m sure there are experienced devs (without family and kids yet) who would prefer personal interest over high salary.
Regarding closer fruits that I’m thinking about:
- I’d wanna see JS Code Sandbox or Rust Playground analog for Haskell. It would allow to experiment with libraries before installing them locally and embed runnable examples in tutorials and documentation. Plain text is good, but when you can try it in a browser without switching context, it’s completely another experience. It would be great to integrate such think to the Haddock.
I started an implementation here: GitHub - haskell-spotlight/haskell-playground: The playground allows you to experiment with Haskell in browser without installing it locally. It allows embedding runnable code examples into tutorials and documentation., but it’s not finished yet.
- I’d wanna see an analog of this NodeJS library for Haskell: GitHub - jaredhanson/passport: Simple, unobtrusive authentication for Node.js.. Almost every web project needs some kind of authentication from start. I encountered difficulties even with Auth0 in Haksell due to lack of clear step-by-step guides.
- I’d wanna Haddock to have JSON output format.
It would allow me to implement Haddock and playground at the package pages like this: math-functions - HaskellSpot: The Haskell community’s home page. You may notice that the search input on page is the same input as in Haskell-Spotlight VSCode extension. It also would allow to provide contextual searches in Hoogle, grep over package sources, etc. using the same search input component.
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I just want to give this tool a shout out and bring it to other people’s attention, Kudos man!!
It also works inside dev containers now.
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Based on the favourable feedback here, something like:
search.haskell.org
for running a combined search of Hackage, Hoogle, the wiki and www content, et al may prove useful…assuming(!) the task of constructing the central interface isn’t too onerous (a well-featured search page will certainly require more work than a IDE or editor plugin).
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