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The single most important element of this package is the cabal-install tool. "cabal install HDBC" or "cabal install hsql" etc. will download, compile and install any library on hackage. Previously you had to 'bootstrap' cabal-install yourself, which wasn't a big deal for experienced users but was an annoyingly significant barrier for newcomers.

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While I agree unreservedly with this, it's probably worth pointing out for the benefit of those who haven't gone through the process themselves that bootstrapping cabal-install is a five-minute job (or less, depending on how many dependencies you need to compile). The barrier is that one needs to look up the instructions, and know that one should be looking looking something up, rather than it being in any way difficult or complex.

http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Cabal-Install

I appreciate that; I am something of a "languages pioneer" at work, and I have gotten good traction with Python because the learning curve is very shallow. You can use it a a glorified shell script and get something useful done very quickly and as you learn more you can add in the FP goodness, OO, whatever you want, it grows with you. Now looking to take it a bit further, I am shopping around, Haskell and OCaml are candidates, but to sell this on the grounds of, learning this and using it will get your project done quicker than continuing in what you're using now. So I have shot myself in the foot a bit; Python is really productive, and other than the language itself, the biggest factor is the ActiveState "batteries included" distribution.

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