Tony Morris

Stack - manages ghc versions for projects - provides automatic sandboxing with dependency sharing where appropriate - handles git dependencies - file watch is useful, even when ghcid is available

Don't forget about curation of packages on LTS; conflicts on the dependencies of my dependencies stop being a problem as soon as someone else automated a "tests and notification" platform for responsible authors, I would use stack/stackage just for that alone

I tried to read all of this thread, despite the Twitter UI's best efforts to stop me. My best understanding of @dibblego's argument is this: 1) For teaching, use raw GHC/GHCI, not even Cabal. It's a simplier tool, and all you need for simple single-file compilations.

2) Using Stack as a faux-produxtion teaching enviornment just gives more fuel to the argument of using Stack in production as beginners matriculate. This has analogs with the arguments to use Scala over Haskell. It's easier at the start, but not better, and not easier for long.

Personally, I think the choice is less critical when it comes to teaching. Good students will switch tools for good reasons. A good instructor and the actual Haskell code is much more important than the small amount of tooling we use to bootstrap an environment.

I tell people not to use Stack, because people have come to my classes trying to use Stack and it doesn't work. Not about good/bad students (but I've never had a bad one)

I'm open to this argument, but so many people haven't had this particular experience with new learners. What broke?

Yes they have. You just didn't hear about them.