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Comment by zer00eyz | Hacker News Reader

Can someone who knows more about Haskell explain to me what the hell I'm getting for 25 bucks here? Cant I replicate all of the features it has with off the shelf tools/editors that are free? Wouldn't that path be less limited than this "sandboxed" app with "access other files or to initiate a network connection will be rejected by the operating system" restrictions?

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>Cant I replicate all of the features it has with off the shelf tools/editors that are free?

You obviously get the convenience of NOT having to replicate all these, and the guaranteed experience of those parts working together as soon as you install it, and with a nice GUI at that.

Sounds good but still not convincing. For example, R can do the same thing, too, or even better. And it can be integrated with other programming languages. I would never buy it either until somebody really shows it's worth the money.

This has little to do with Haskell as a language, and more to do with this specific tool. Your argument is a little like saying about paying for an editor "For example, VIM can do the same thing, too, or even better...".

What you get is a nice looking environment with a built-in playground alá Swift's, that can visualise data, types and even games.

It's only $25.

I've been interested in playing with Haskell for a while but I've been put off by the need to setup existing tools. Having an all-in-one package with neat presentation, packaged libraries, and immediate feedback sounds like a great deal for $25.

The problem is having to use a Mac. I guess that I could spin up my Yosemite virtual machine...

I think having to run a VM you don't often use is kind of defeating the purpose of the app.

If you're willing to run a VM for a single app you are probably the type of person who is willing to spend the time to set up a Haskell tool chain and libraries for free.

Although I am most definitely not that type of person, all I care about is playing with the language. Anything detrimental to that is just noise and not worth the time. So I consider the $25 quite a cheap price to not have to think about the extraneous actions required to get a Haskell environment up and running.

I already have the Haskell toolchain and libraries. It merely required the command "apt-get install haskell-platform". However, the Haskell Playgrounds feature that Chakravarty offers sounds interesting enough to spin up a Mac VM.

It doesn't take many "only $25"s before you've spend $100.

$100 is also quite cheap for a well developed piece of software that you enjoy using.

Depending on how many other dollars you have to spend on things that you might enjoy eating.

I think the playground is probably its most unique feature. Other languages have it, but they're either too heavy to be practical (scala worksheets), embedded in a browser (python), or just not languages I care to work with (Swift). I love the idea of being able to throw some quick code together in a window, see immediate results and tweak things until I get what I want.

Haskell is particularly well suited to this king of workflow, everything being immutable and evaluating to a value. You can think of it as the best programmable calculator in the world.

R cannot compile Haskell code.

SO I can replicate everything this DOES with off the shelf tooling (maybe). And like any setup for a new language, or development environment I may have to RTFM and fiddle.

For 25 bucks, I'm going to get a bunch of limits (including the aforementioned sandbox ones) and these ones too:

"Haskell SpriteKit code can currently only be used in Haskell for Mac."

"can currently not be extended"

"We recommend to only use Haskell for Mac with Cabal files generated by the app itself."

Will these things be a problem? How long before I run up against a wall with this? Am I going to kick myself over the 25 bucks in 2 weeks cause one of these is a show stopper for some common task in haskell?

Like you, I am also sick and tired of people trying to come up with easy-to-use tools for learning Haskell. I love the language, and feel that if someone wants to learn it in a "sandbox", then there's no point. I can't even imagine Haskell without network connections, as we all know that Haskell's main appeal lies in web services and systems-level programming.

This developer better think again before he gets my 20ish dollars!

Oh yeah.. evil programmer wanting 20 dollars from you. Good thing you saw through his plot and held them safe in your purse. We definitely all know what you know is 100% true, no one ever uses Haskell for anything else than web services and systems level programming.

BTW, a little late here... but my comment was actually intended as pure sarcasm over the fact that anyone would so angrily scoff at the idea of paying $20 to a fellow developer and Haskell enthusiast, who is just trying to help others enjoy the language.

Sarcasm is tough.

Haha, you didn't lay it on thick enough ;)

> SO I can replicate everything this DOES with off the shelf tooling (maybe). And like any setup for a new language, or development environment I may have to RTFM and fiddle.

You can't, because you can't program yet, or are still working on improving your programming skills by experimenting with functional programming languages. Why else would you be commenting on a starter development environment for Haskell?

> Will these things be a problem? How long before I run up against a wall with this? Am I going to kick myself over the 25 bucks in 2 weeks cause one of these is a show stopper for some common task in haskell?

If this thing teaches you how to code common tasks in Haskell for only $25 bucks, it'll be the best money you ever spent.

If $25 is a large enough sum of money to cause serious regrets over the coming weeks, then certainly you have my sympathies, but I would suggest it's not actually an issue of what the Haskell package does or doesn't do, it's a situation where you need to decide you're just not in the market for commercial software until your financial situation improves. As you say, there are free DIY alternatives.

And here we have the typical example why selling open source desktop software is so hard.

How much is your time worth?

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