Perception of Haskell as "serious"

[Tom Ellis]

Dear board,

A few months I came across a post on Reddit that presented an
interesting perspective. It said that

> the Haskell community feels boring, full of "why so serious" people,
> Clojure/Kotlin/Elixir communities or many other PL communities have
> a totally different vibe, more "vibrant"

https://old.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1kygyf3/a_break_from_programming_languages/mv6csf6/

I asked for more details and got a very interesting, detailed, response here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1kygyf3/a_break_from_programming_languages/mvjjt10/

I think the response is worth reading in full, but to give a taster,
it says that there seem to be fewer "new stuff" announcements for
Haskell than Clojure, the Haskell Interlude is more "bland" (that word
is my interpretatation) than the Clojure podcast, and that "Servant's
website is meh, stuck in time" whereas IHP "doesn't align with what
the haskell community values".

I don't have a particular proposed response, nor necessarily a wish to
start a discussion, but I thought it was an interesting point and I
can see where it's coming from, so I wanted to share.

Tom

[Andrew Lelechenko]

As a quick note: I think it’s true that Haskell Interlude prefers somewhat “bland” = “uncontroversial” speakers (certainly Snoyman’s controversy was not intentional ;) and discusses historical matters “how did you get into Haskell” rather than “Haskell today”.

I think a podcast with opinionated hosts about “what’s new on Hackage this week” would be a good idea.

Best regards,
Andrew

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[Avi Press]

I agree it could be good for the podcast to showcase what's new, though there is already dedicated content like this such as the Haskell Weekly newsletter.

The fact that the reddit post bring up the websites of the most prominent web frameworks is telling. I suspect the problem of appearing more vibrant, while partially just a matter of just needing to be more vibrant, will come down to a community effort to showcase progress in a way that's compelling to a broader audience than just the most hardcore of Haskell fans. That requires a real intentional effort to do a better job at marketing. I wonder how else the HF can help catalyze that. 

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[Andres Löh]

Hi.

I am happy to forward the suggestions about the podcast to the team. The original decision to focus on people and their Haskell stories was deliberate, but now that the podcast is established, there's perhaps an opportunity and an appetite to widen the scope and do other things as well. The general feedback I'm getting about the podcast is overwhelmingly positive though.

Regarding some of the other points in that thread: I quite agree that the Haskell community (including the Haskell Foundation) is overall doing a terrible job presenting itself. Most websites are old, look uninspired, confusing, barely maintained. It's difficult to find what one is looking for, it's difficult to see things that are changing and new. (This also includes Well-Typed's website.) A notable exception is HWN. We would probably have to talk to the Haskell.org committee, but I think it would be great if we could somehow make another push to improve presentation and organisation of materials in the community.

Best,

Andres

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