Haskell App Reviews

I like that it includes a whole lot of Haskell libraries built right in and that the UI looks nice. However, the autocomplete sometimes feels like a hindrance then a help. For example, when I press the Spacebar for defining a parameter of a function, it will autocomplete with an existing binding. I should not have to press Esc to exit the autocomplete everytime I want to do this. For this and the lack of Vim mode, I will dock one star. Solid effort by the Developer for trying to give a really good Haskell experience on Mac though.

If you’ve ever used Swift Playgrounds, you kind of know what to expect here. Honestly there’s no higher praise I can give an app than to say it does exactly what it advertises it does. It has a level of polish to match the Xcode interfaces it clearly takes much inspiration from.

I really like this IDE. Its a tremendous help while learning Haskell. Also, thank you so much for fixing the auto complete.

When I run the examples provided to draw the graphics, the application crashes immediately on El Capitan.

Love it. Getting a Haskell project up and running from scratch can be very discouraging for beginners who are itching to get their hands dirty. The immediacy of this program has made learning, what is a very difficult language, an absolute pleasure for me. Minor nitpicks: - Slightly bummed by the lack of editing shortcuts you’d typically find in a code editor. - I find displaying the SpriteKit scenes in a popover/tooltip a little akward - I’d prefer that it just run in place, or on click if desired.

I program as a hobby, primarily with Java and Scala. Thus, I am used to JetBrain's products, and I've not found the Haskell plugin to be ideal for someone just starting out with Haskell, as I am. The Haskell IDE provides an Xcode like interface that is easily intuitive. You can create either an executable or a library project. And the IDE features a SUPER handy playground area for newbies to experiment with the language as they are coding. This is an excellent piece of software, ideally for any Haskell developer, new or otherwise.

I have been wanting to learn Haskell and recently started to research the best ways to get a Haskell environment up and running on my iMac to play around with the language. I came across this program and initially was skeptical that it would be worth the $20. However, my desire to learn Haskell and the potential benefits of this tool made me quickly overlook the price and I am glad that I did. First, the editor does a great job with Haskell. It has an Xcode-like interface which makes it immediately familiar for a lot of programmers on the Mac. While the keyboard shortcuts are not an exact one-to-one with Xcode, the author did make sure to align with the most important ones. And it offers a live playground which allows you to learn Haskell interactively or experiment with an idea or existing piece of code. Anyone who has done any work with Playgrounds know how fantastic the visual REPL is. This one does not fall short in any way and relunctantly I will admit it is more responsive than Xcode’s. I haven’t explored if it offers any markup/markdown support, but the current version is well worth the investment even if you only use it to a) learn Haskell and b) occassionally pull it up to solve problems in Haskell So if you are trying to learn Haskell, I highly recommend this program.

I come out of a C, C++, C# world, and Haskell has been a challenge for me to noodle...until this product came along. I read a couple of tutorials and overviews and messed with plugins for my traditional dev tooling…but still got kinda lost along the way. This product, together with it’s accompanying tutorial and sample projects, broke down all the barriers. The playground is awesome! It makes figuring out your mistakes (and you will make mistakes) easy and interactive. I found myself writing immensely powerful programs with very little code…demonstrating the power of the language. Some of these programs - very natural in Haskell - would be awkward or difficult with my traditional tools. It’s a credit to the authors to simply illustrate the power of functional programming early. That’s the big epiphany that folks encumbered with preconceptions similar to mine are looking for. I am grateful!

On a early 2015 macbook pro. Was broken out of the box, but thanks to excellent support from the developer I was able to get a working version. Since then it has worked flawlessly, and been the perfect platform for learning Haskell.

This has made going through haskell books and tutorials so much more pleasant. I wish it was extensible and had code completion, but otherwise it was worth every penny!

I was a little hesitant at first to buy this app, but I have been pleasently surprised with how nicely it works out of the box. New features keep on rolling out. The 1 thing which made it fall short of say, a good plugin for intellij was that there was no auto complete when I purchased it. Even so the purchase was worth it, and that feature has now been added too :) I had 1 issue, which turned out to be a non issue, and I received a reply to my email within a few hours

This is such a good purchase to have all the installation hassles gone. The doc is excellent. The interface is easy, obvious and smooth. Fantastic.

Integration with the SpriteKit and the very well written tutorial makes learning Haskell fun and easier to visualize what is going on. The editor itself has a lot of potential to be a great IDE for Haskell, and currently is more than sufficient for getting beginners started with writing Haskell code right away. The tutorial provides a great start to learning Haskell but still has a long way to go to fully explain the fundamentals of FP. I am looking forward to seeing it unfold over time. The app is an excellent value for the price.

If you’ve ever been curious about functional programming, or have been meaning to tinker with the Haskell programming language, this is the place to start. After working with Swift playgrounds and IPython notebooks, I’m convinced that interactive, compute-as-you-type environments are the best way to learn a new language. I wanted to learn Haskell last year, so I spent days setting up an IHaskell environment to tinker with it. I learned an incredible amount about that language in a short period of time by experimenting with it in an interactive IHaskell notebook. Haskell for Mac takes all the hassle out of setting up a system like that, and makes it a one-click install. Not only that, but it provides a truly as-you-type evaluation of everything you’re entering. It even contains all the packages you’d need to perform advanced graphing, something that took me over a week and a huge amount of frustration to get right in IHaskell. The interface is simple yet polished, and makes it easy to organize even multiple-file projects with resources within the playground environment. I’m really excited about the potential for this application to speed up my Haskell learning and development process. If you have any interest in Haskell or functional programming, you owe it to yourself to get this.

I’ve been trying to learn Haskell for a while. However, it was always a pain because I spent just as much time playing around with the text editor, compiling, and whatnot as I did trying to learn how Haskell actually works. This is why I give four stars. It’s trying to fill in the need for a true Haskell IDE, not a bunch of extensions that need configured on some IDE meant for something else. Is it perfect? No. If you’re trying to learn Haskell it’s better than any other option in my opinion. If you’re an actual Haskell dev it probably won’t fill your needs yet. I won’t say it was worth the money in its current state, but it is actively developed and I’m glad I could support the developer to take this app to where it needs to be.

It is really convenient, It is great for a haskell n00b like myself. The only reason i don’t rate 5 stars is that it does not have unit testing. I will update my rating if this is added.

The IDE has not given me any problems. It includes a large library of packages to use when you become ambitious.

This is a very important feature for me. I saw in the other review (by parvez.ahmed) that completion was added. If it really is there, I certainly can’t find it, so I’d rather use ghci.

So far its working well for me. The playground style repl makes it easy to try explore types of things and experiment with quick functions more easily than the classic repl. As a Haskell learner, I suspect I’ll be using it more and more to help me work through problems. I’d love to see them update to the latest version of GHC and expand the list of included libraries to cover more fun stuff: maybe gloss, sdl2, and diagrams.

Worth it! Playgrounds and a reasonably complete IDE environment set up out of the box really helps when trying to tackle Haskell, a language whose learning curve is frighteningly close to 90º. The developer is very responsive and the app is under regular active development.

I’ve been using Haskell since the late 1990s, mostly Vim / Hugs and then switched to Vim / GHCI. Never managed to get Leksah working though I have to admit I didn’t try very hard. Haskell FP Lab took under 5 minutes to get the hang of. Haskell FP Lab is essentially a source code viewer right next to a REPL IDE. The IDE is for the REPL more than for the source code hence the comments about it lacking some standard IDE featues. Let me explain what I mean. In Haskell FP lab there are 3 panes: source, input, output. The constant rerunning of the input and output is important in terms of GHCI ease and simplicity. Let’s say for example in normal GHCI I define A then B in terms of A then C in terms of B and then I switch the definiton of A. In GHCI this doesn’t auto update the definitions of A and B from the command line. GHCI uses a numbering scheme internally. Definitions do update when reloading the source file however (:l …) Which means my REPL environment can get out of step with my source environment and what worked in the REPL won’t work, or won’t work the same source. The IDE interactive environment in Haskell FP Lab makes the GHCI REPL explicit and easy to see in terms of sequencng. You also get integrated type definitions with expression from your REPL which can help. The ease of integration between the REPL and the editor is what you are buying and it does save time and confusion. In terms of source IDE I think the comments below are valid. Hopefully future versions at least steal the coloring from other other open soruce editors that’s an easy update. Obviously things like source completion and suggestion would be useful but may be too hard. Easier more inegrated view of source for libraries. An updated Zvon type reference. Etc… would all be a huge plus. In short this is a good product. If you are getting started it will save you time. If you are comfortable with your editor plus GHCI it will still save you time. If you are the sort of person to be reading a review of a Mac Haskell IDE this is worth $20 to you: you’ll definitely use it $20 worth.

Thank you

Absolutely the best way to learn and use Haskell on Mac. Works well with Sierra and developer is very responsive to questions. 10 STARS!