Add a "Start Coding" section.

[lsmor]

Hi. It isn't a secret that newcommers have problems setting up a Development environment. The reason is that there is no single place within haskell.org, hls documentation nor ghcup documentation where you can find a minimal, clear and strightforward guide (MCSG from now on).

Just to be clear and avoid unproductive discussion. Let me explain what a MCSG is:

• Because is a guide it should guide you step by step from "My computer only has OS software installed" to "I am programming in Haskell with the full power of an IDE"
• Because is strightforward it should not branch. you don't want to use vscode? ok, let me point you to "other editors" link, but such a link shouldn't be part of the guide itself.
• Because is clear each step should not be larger than one click or one execution command.
• Because is minimal it should not give more information than necessary. If I have to navegate across multiple markdown hearders to find out how to configure the editor, or how to install the building tool, then it isn't minimal.

Some consequences of having a MCSG is that you need to select sensible defaults hence being biased towards tooling. In the Haskell case, the alternative which has proved better consistency is ghcup + ghc + cabal + hls + vscode. This isn't an opinion. hls is biased towards vscode and stack does not integrate well with hls unless you configure it properly (using system-ghc).

If we were about to choose other editors or stack as default options, then we would need to provide extra configuration instructions for them, hence It wouldn't be minimal. If we were about to let the user decide between stack and cabal or vim/emacs/vscode then It wouldn't be straightforward. Lastly, if we don't use ghcup it would be clear because downloading each tool manually and configuring each of them to work properly and not break on updates is difficult if you aren't an experienced user.

The benefits of having a MCSG are clear. Many developers (In my experience, much more than I would have expect) do not know what a language server is, do not know or care about unix philosophy, do not want to read documentation, do not actually read documentation if they can copy paste a command in the terminal. If these developers come to haskell.org and find different ways of installing haskell, not mention about editors, many different tools, etc... the most probable outcome is "I will just installed pycharm and be happy". Actually, this is what I found helping newcommers (objectively, not a huge sample: a few people over cardano's discord and five co-workers).

In Discourse I posted a link to a github gist having a three step guide which is commited to MCSG as defined here. Whether it should be on hls home page or haskell.org is debatable, that's why I am opening this issue. If you consider this belongs to hls just tell me. In my opinion, haskell.org should provide this information, because is very unlikely that newcommers now what a language server is, hence there is low probability of them searching for haskell language server instead of just haskell.

The guide ifself is only the first markdown header. There are two more sections including

• "other editor" pointing to hls documentation
• Instructions for stack integration, because it is still a widely used tool.

by the way, stack instructions are a little bit verbose because there is a surprisingly high amount of stack user who don't know how stack works. Every now and then there is a question in SO asking "why stack doesn't build my project"

[tomjaguarpaw]

For reference, a couple of related issues:

• Updating the Documentation page #189
• Optimizing initial experience on haskell.org for the first-time Haskell user #136

[lsmor]

So, Is haskell.org willing to review such a change if I PR it? (I am not a web developer, so I am only making a draft.) @tomjaguarpaw

[rebeccaskinner]

I’d love to see a PR for this. I do expect that it might take a while to land because there will probably be a lot of input from the community, but I do feel like this is really high value.