Tony Morris

"Stack sucks." "But why? Loads of people are way more productive with Stack than cabal." "That doesn't count because I say so."

nobody is saying "Cabal is good for beginners and you must use it" - so no, it's really not about Cabal.

ah gotcha ... so is the other alternative nix?

my team uses Nix for everything so some people have used it, but no, I get beginners to just grab GHC however they want.

sure but I guess I don’t really follow are you saying to use ghc directly or something else?

yes, GHC is good for beginners. Nobody in my classes trying to use Stack has moved onto "ok it's working let's learn"

Anecdotally, I have had precisely the opposite experience when working with new learners of the language. This is especially true when they move beyond self contained examples/projects and begin to interact with the greater package ecosystem.

Again, anecdotally, but I have also found that a great number of libraries and applications use stack and Stackage, so that’s usually good incentive to familiarize them it as well.