Commercial Haskell software tools FP Complete has launched FP Haskell Center - Personal, a browser-based IDE for Haskell beginners and enthusiasts to learn and explore Haskell under a non-commercial license.
This release potentially reduces (or "eliminates" if you prefer its owner's description) the barrier to learning and accessing Haskell by reducing (again, replace with "eliminating" if you wish) the currently time-consuming and frustrating process of setting up an install and assembling the libraries and toolchain needed just to get started.
NOTE: FP Haskell Center - Personal is an IDE for professional Haskell programmers to showcase the benefits of Haskell in their current work environments where Haskell hasn't been adopted yet for various reasons.
As Dr. Dobb's readers know, Haskell is a purely functional, open-source programming language with 20 years of development behind it. It has good cross-language integration and built-in concurrency and parallelism, plus debuggers, profilers, and libraries.
"What FP Complete offers overall: tutorials, in-browser ability to write and compile against examples, the aim of the IDE, etc., is spectacular," commented one user, David Setchell.
Independent developer Kasper Janssens stated, "It beats any home brew set up I have ever worked with hands down, and the support people behind it are very responsive and helpful as well.”
"We got resounding feedback from the Haskell community that they wanted a version of FP Haskell Center geared specifically for non-commercial Haskell developers and here it is," FP Complete Founder/CEO Aaron Contorer said. "We're excited to see what the Haskell community can achieve with FP Haskell Center - Personal and how it will broaden the Haskell user base."
