Haskell for Mac

by grayprog • 11 years ago

297 174 11 years ago

eridius5• 11 years ago

Reading this page, it sounds very cool. It also sounds like it's heavily inspired by Swift Playgrounds, including using SpriteKit as an example.

I am a bit baffled as to why it says the Haskell code can't initiate network connections. Yeah the app is sandboxed, but sandboxed apps can easily request network access. And it seems like that's a common-enough thing to want that it should support it.

Tehnix5• 11 years ago

Yeah, that one stuck to me as well. I don't know if they mean anything specific with "network connections" here, cause I see a lot of apps that talk to the outside world on the MAS.

eridius5• 11 years ago

I think it just means the app didn't request the ability to make network requests. I just don't understand why not.

oisdk2• 11 years ago

While you are allowed network-connected apps on the MAS, you have to specify the entitlement. I'd imagine that's something you'd have to justify (or at the very least you'd get more scrutiny and a longer approval time).

mchakravarty5• 11 years ago

You can request entitlements, such as network access, but you need to justify them in the App Store review process. Given that Haskell for Mac is pushing the boundaries of what is available on the Mac App Store, I wanted to err on the side of being too conservative for the launch version.

I will certainly work towards network support in coming releases.

zer00eyz2• 11 years ago

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?

coldtea• 11 years ago

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.

tonylxc• 11 years ago

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.

zer00eyz2• 11 years ago

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?

pjmlp2• 11 years ago

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

dons• 11 years ago

How much is your time worth?

trymas2• 11 years ago

I would like to see some demo version, as 20€ is a bit too much to drop.

Looks cool, lots of inspiration from swift playgrounds. Though, aren't there any open source alternatives (I have never tried haskell), probably similar to ipython (jupyter) stack?

Nullabillity• 11 years ago

Perhaps IHaskell (https://github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell) is what you're looking for? It seems to be available on Jupyter's demo website.

edraferi• 11 years ago

I'm a heavy iPython user and thought iHaskell would be a good way to try out the language on my Mac. Unfortunately I just wound up in Cabal Hell. I spent a few hours tracking down broken dependencies on GitHub before giving up.

This project looks exciting because it lets you get started with a working distribution. I'm happy to pay for the privilege of ignoring the mess until the language has proven itself to me.

orjan• 11 years ago

At https://www.haskell.org/, you can try Haskell in the browser. You can also find binary distributions here.

Also, this book is supposed to be a good intro to Haskell: http://learnyouahaskell.com/

mathetic• 11 years ago

And let's not forget GHCi, which you get when you install Glasgow Haskell Compiler. It's a REPL and one of the best ways to play with Haskell.

cwyers• 11 years ago

I know this is a statement of where the market is going, but boy is it depressing to see people saying that 20 Euros is too much to drop on a piece of software.

anon1385• 11 years ago

I don't think trymas was suggesting that €20 is too much to pay for a piece of software, but that it is too much to pay for software that you have not been able to evaluate at all first.

Quequau• 11 years ago

As far as I can tell, it isn't feature complete yet. I've got no problem spending €20 on this but I'm not really up for paying €20 so I can be a beta tester.

trymas2• 11 years ago

<rant> Sorry, but we are not living in US or well developed European country (Austria, Switzerland, Norway..). In one workday I make ~40€ after taxes and it's almost twice the average and almost thrice the minimum salary were I live. I would've not said a word if I would've been making >50,000 € a year, like in mentioned countries.

Dropping half of my days work on a software, which has limited capabilities, unknown reviews, is closed source (even though is basically bundled open source tools in, I suppose, comfortable package), and can cause some extra bugs from it self. Give me ol' good 14 day trial, or I will not pay blindly. </rant>

PieSquared2• 11 years ago

Take a look at IHaskell -- it's a kernel for Jupyter for Haskell.

If you'd like to just take a look, go to try.jupyter.org and select the "Welcome to Haskell" notebook!

mchakravarty5• 11 years ago

Yes, I totally understand the desire to try the app first. For the launch version, we had no choice, but to go with the Mac App Store.

I have started to investigate alternative distribution channels (which then would allow trials, too), but that will take a while to implement (so, I can't promise anything concrete at the moment).

shocks2• 11 years ago

Any plans for Linux support?

QuantumRoar2• 11 years ago

Somehow I seriously doubt it. But I keep hoping such things as well :)

shocks2• 11 years ago

I feel the same. I guess I'm mostly just asking so it is known that there is at least some demand for such a product. :)

srtjstjsj• 11 years ago

80% of the app's value is Mac-specific UI patterns. Does Linux have a good port of that? I know there was NextStep/GNUStep, but I don't think it's up-to-date with modern Cocoa nibs.

szastupov• 11 years ago

Looks amazing, I really want to try it. Maybe a trial version? Because with current exchange rates in Russia, $24.99 is a shitload of rubles :)

grayprog3• 11 years ago

From what I see, it's actually selling for USD$19.99. The $24.99 is in Australian Dollars.

gamache• 11 years ago

As required by the Mac App Store, Haskell for Mac is sandboxed. Consequently, Haskell code executed in a Haskell for Mac playground cannot access any data except for Haskell for Mac documents, the app container, and those system files white-listed by the operating system. Any attempt to access other files or to initiate a network connection will be rejected by the operating system.

This seems unnecessarily crippling. Is this really required of desktop App Store apps?

zoul4• 11 years ago

Yes, it’s required. Only some apps are exempt from sandboxing because they existed before sandboxing was introduced. You can also reach out of the sandbox through some user actions, for example opening a file using the system file picker gives you permissions to access this file. Yes, it’s a big constraint. For some apps it’s a show-stopper. As user I mostly welcome it because of the additional protection it gets me.

feelix3• 11 years ago

Apart from that it doesn't get you any additional protection whatsoever. With all the root OS X exploits floating around that bust you out of the sandbox as well as giving you full system access, as someone that has several utilities on the Mac App Store, it would be trivial to put an app there that gets set off by a timer, exploits root, and wreaks havoc.

Source: https://www.google.com/search?q=os+x+root+exploit&gws_rd=ssl

tempodox6• 11 years ago

Exhibit A for how questionable this Sandboxing is when it comes to things like programming languages. And exhibit A for how Mac is becoming a household appliance instead of a general-purpose computer that YOU own and do with what YOU want. If you want to own your Mac you need to stay away from the AppStore at the very least, and ideally build all your shit yourself.

rdsnsca2• 11 years ago

Its not required to install apps through the MAS.

webXL2• 11 years ago

I'd bet that fewer than 5% of Apple customers want a general-purpose computer, and it hasn't deviated much from that over time. Apple has always locked down their hardware and software relative to their competitors. The "it just works" philosophy isn't free, and if it seems like it's getting more locked down, it might have something to do with Apple trying to maintain its profits in the face of increasing competition.

The "household-appliance" moniker is a red herring though. Just because they supply an App Store doesn't mean you have to use it, and it doesn't mean you can't do amazing things with it. Are we really comparing something that can help educate, research, run a business, entertain, etc. with a dishwasher or TV?

s73v3r5• 11 years ago

No, it really isn't. There's no reason why this app couldn't be distributed outside of the App Store, in which case YOU can still do what YOU want.

kyllo2• 11 years ago

Wait, this is a desktop app?

Wow... based on the sandboxing thing I had assumed it was an iOS app for learning Haskell on your iPad or something.

hundchenkatze• 11 years ago

How? The title clearly states Haskell for Mac. The site's host is even http://haskellformac.com, and there's no mention of iOS on the home page.

z5h2• 11 years ago

No side effects!

vvanders• 11 years ago

This is way more funny that it has any right to be, bravo!

_jsn• 11 years ago

Swift Playgrounds are sandboxed in about the exact same way. And for pretty obvious reasons, I'd think. (Or have people already forgotten about when Playground files would immediately destroy your home directory as soon as you typed in the code?)

pjmlp2• 11 years ago

I love sandboxing.

It is also the way to go on Android, iOS, Windows 10 onwards. And was on Symbian as well.

If an application get p0wned, it won't be able to access more than what is strictly necessary to perform its duty, instead of free reign over my $HOME.

duaneb• 11 years ago

Quite honestly, this is the main attraction of the app store. That and trivial installs, though that's a tiny constant convenience.

teacup506• 11 years ago

I don't understand why they're only releasing this through the App Store in the first place.

- Giving 30% to Apple is no small thing

- You lose the ability to maintain a direct relationship with your customers, provide upgrade pricing, etc

- Any updates are gated behind a delay-and-frustration-prone release process.

- There are plenty of services that will handle billing for 5% or less, compared to Apple's 30%. However, in the post-Stripe universe, implementing a webstore yourself is actually super easy.

outworlder• 11 years ago

Is the company located in the US? Or in a Stripe-supported country?

If not, there's your answer.

mchakravarty5• 11 years ago

There are many advantages and disadvantages to distributing through the App Store. It definitely makes launching a new product easier.

We have started to investigate other distribution channels. However, adding that option will take some work (= time).

rubiquity• 11 years ago

It sounds like this app needs a monad for interacting with the host file system and network.

gohrt3• 11 years ago

MAS apps are banned from accessing the Internet?!

rdsnsca2• 11 years ago

amelius• 11 years ago

Why do we still have platform-specific applications in 2015? Any good software engineering environment should set an example and show that we do not need to live by such artificial restrictions.

Tehnix5• 11 years ago

Because making a cross-platform GUI is quite the pain, unless you jump into web technologies. And even then you still have a lot of obstacles to go through, like SpriteKit is OS X only.

zoul4• 11 years ago

Because there’s no environment that would give you native-like experience on multiple platforms without extra work. And developers have limited resources, even in 2015.

marcosscriven2• 11 years ago

Although it is possible to write everything, right up to the view model (but not the view) in something cross platform and performant, keeping the GUI/view using only those languages/frameworks which result in native feel (both in terms of look and performance).

Sure, writing the GUI properly for each platform still requires more work, but far far less if all but the front end is cross platform.

However, it very rarely seems to be done, even with modern additions and improvements in C++.

irrlichthn• 11 years ago

Those 'artificial' restrictions are as natural as they can get. Different operating systems have different Shells and APIs, even programming languages. Nothing artificial in there.

prof_hobart• 11 years ago

In my experience cross-platform means "runs just as badly everywhere". They pretty much never feel like native on any platform.

And what's the advantage to the average user? If I'm a Mac user, I'm interested in Application X working just like every other Mac application. Similarly if I'm a Windows user. I'm rarely bothered that Application X works the same on both Windows and Mac.

warmfuzzykitten2• 11 years ago

Just a point of etiquette. Does it really make sense to down-vote a question to oblivion when the question has attracted reasonable responses?

In fact, this question contains by implication another seemingly reasonable question: Given that there exists a universally available cross-platform development API, why, in 2015, is anyone writing anything other than a web application?

carterschonwald• 11 years ago

This looks like it's by Manuel Chakravarty. He's a long time Haskell contributor / researcher. His research lab is responsible for a huge chunk of array fusion related research that's happened using Haskell over the years.

Given the baked in support for sprite kit, I presume that this is an evolution of the tools he used to teach his young ones how to write games.

JadeNB6• 11 years ago

I really enjoyed reading about that learning / teaching process as it unfolded. I think the discussion is at the GitHub repository https://github.com/mchakravarty/lets-program , though a glance doesn't reveal how up-to-date it is (it refers to 3 coding sessions, then numbers them 1 through 7).

tempodox6• 11 years ago

A programming language implementation that is subject to sandboxing? Mac has become the parody of a computer.

Tehnix5• 11 years ago

Everything is subject to sandboxing if it wants to sell through the Mac App Store. He could also just not do that, and have none of those limitations.

keithy• 11 years ago

It's a restriction of the Mac App Store, not the actual Mac computer itself. Mac is just Unix with a pretty UI and lots of features.

tempodox6• 11 years ago

Technically, that's true of course. I myself use the “computer” part only and shun the “AppStore” part as much as at all possible, but Apple is renowned for the deep integration of all kinds of components and there comes a point where you just don't have a choice any more. I seem to see the area of free choice getting smaller with every OS release.

unfamiliar• 11 years ago

There was no need for the developers to release this on the App Store. Anyone installing a Haskell IDE is perfectly capable of installing an app normally.

seanmcdirmid7• 11 years ago

They are charging money for it, so that is reason enough to use the Mac app store. If it was free, then I totally agree.

erpellan• 11 years ago

I bought it. If someone (cough)Jetbrains were to offer a full blown IDE with code-navigation, refactoring tools, smart autocomplete etc etc. I would pay them 10 times as much.

jporsay• 11 years ago

And something such as haskforce[1] wouldn't work for you? [1] http://carymrobbins.github.io/intellij-haskforce/

theCodeStig• 11 years ago

Is a full blown IDE (ala IntelliJ) really necessary for Haskell?

seanmcdirmid7• 11 years ago

All that static typing shoud lead to an awesome IDE experience. Given that this hasn't happened, I wonder if there isn't something wrong with Haskell's design that works against it?

cthulha2• 11 years ago

Wrong question to be asking.

What can a great IDE add to the experience of learning / using Haskell?

quadrangle• 11 years ago

Donate to Free/Libre/Open projects working on this instead of locked-down proprietary ones. There are two promising projects approaching (not all there yet) exactly what you want: https://atom.io/packages/ide-haskell for Atom and http://leksah.org/

spiralpolitik• 11 years ago

Last I checked that the community version of IntelliJ was open source and available under the terms of the Apache license.

http://www.jetbrains.org/display/IJOS/FAQ

wyager• 11 years ago

For something similar that is free (as in beer, but also just a wrapper around free-as-in-speech software), see http://www.kronosnotebook.com/haskell

mseri• 11 years ago

When I've read the title I thought it was about leksah [1]. I've not used it since some time but according to recent reviews is getting quite good.

[1] http://leksah.org

song• 11 years ago

I would buy it if it were not sold through the Mac App Store and not sandboxed... There are applications that make sense to sell in the Mac App Store, a programing environment isn't one of them.

spike0213• 11 years ago

Was a bit disappointed when I found out they don't have any education/academic discount beyond education bulk purchasing.

Looks pretty cool though.

grayprog3• 11 years ago

It's sold through the Mac App Store only right now, so it's limited to what the Mac App Store allows, unfortunately.

Maybe in the future, if it goes well, the developer might consider selling outside the Mac App Store, and this have more flexibility. I have no knowledge of his plans on that matte,r though.

spike0213• 11 years ago

Been a while since I looked at App Store policies, but couldn't they charge a discounted price outside the store and then give a promo code to the app?

warmfuzzykitten2• 11 years ago

It's a pricing problem. To begin with, $25 probably isn't enough to make the project financially successful, as it can't be expected to sell in large volume. Small-volume products need to find a sweet spot in the demand*unit-price curve. If no such spot exists, as may well be the case for software development tools, the developer may as well give it away. The Mac market is particularly low-cost, low-return.

Secondly, if the product were priced at a point where it produced a viable revenue stream - for example, Logic Pro X addresses a very large market and is priced at $199.99 - one could hardly expect the student discounted price for the full product to be less than $25. However, my experience has been that no matter how low-priced the product (greater than $0), students will always ask for a lower price. :)

jd3• 11 years ago

I'm just glad there's a nice binary of GHC available to download from somewhere. I'm running 10.11, and I had to compile GHC from source (homebrew) on my MacBook air in order to install youtube-dl with rtmpdump support. It took literally all night to compile. Hours and hours and hours.

embwbam• 11 years ago

Another way to get binaries is to install with stack. See here: http://seanhess.github.io/2015/08/04/practical-haskell-getti.... At our first Utah Haskell meetup we had around 30 people manage to get GHC and some libraries installed, then complete a tutorial in less than a couple hours.

Tehnix5• 11 years ago

Didn't https://ghcformacosx.github.io/ work for you? I have no problems on 10.11 with GHC.

JadeNB6• 11 years ago

I think that the Haskell Platform has binaries for the Mac: https://www.haskell.org/platform/mac.html .

vitd• 11 years ago

This looks really cool! I tried learning Haskell on the Mac a year or two ago. It was painful having to use command-line tools and text editors. I eventually hacked Xcode to do the syntax highlighting and to run the build commands for Haskell. But that breaks every time Xcode updates, etc. This looks like it solves that problem! Can't wait to try it out.

One thing I'd like to see is how well it works for calling into the OS, or at least calling into or being called from C/C++/Objective-C (and eventually Swift).

xbshift1• 11 years ago

I will buy this as soon as it can initiate network connections.

mchakravarty5• 11 years ago

That feature will come.

evandrix• 11 years ago

Paid App to do Haskell? pfft.

JadeNB6• 11 years ago

I imagine that this is a naïve question, but it's sincere: what does this app offer for its $20 cost that the Haskell platform doesn't? Of their five big selling points, three don't seem really convincing: it mentions that it includes 200 libraries—more than HP, but not the sort of thing one needs to pay for; there is SpriteKit support, of which they say:

We will release the SpriteKit binding under a permissive open source license for general use as soon as possible.

; and "Let the type system help you", which, of course, is just a feature of Haskell, not of this environment.

A drag'n'drop project manager is nice, but doesn't seem like that big a deal; so I guess that the real selling point is the "Immediate feedback". Indeed, that seems to be a huge selling point, and it's something for which I've often wished while coding Haskell. However, their blurb on it is very brief:

Haskell playgrounds provide instant feedback, displaying types and results of computations, both textual and graphical.

Is there any way to read more about this, and, in particular, to evaluate how much value it adds before buying?

ics• 11 years ago

Quoting /u/kamatsu (from reddit): "Some context. This is a very early version released by /u/chak in time for ICFP. There are lots more features planned, so don't view this as the final product."

Comparing it to HP doesn't really make sense; it's a very early stage IDE with some yet-unreleased libraries and Xcode-like features/interaction (see Playgrounds) by a known GHC/Haskell developer.

JadeNB6• 11 years ago

Comparing it to HP doesn't really make sense

Indeed, I should have made it clear that I was looking for an appropriate comparison, not meaning to suggest that HP (which was just the first thing that came to mind) was an appropriate comparison. Thanks for the insight!

oisdk2• 11 years ago

The blog link on the website fleshes out the thinking a little further:

http://blog.haskellformac.com/blog/from-the-read-eval-print-...

The author also had a blog post on it here:

http://justtesting.org/post/103422773731/why-are-playgrounds...

Haskell for Mac

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