+
+The joke being: haha, Haskell is only for super-geniuses like
+Einstein. There's lots to complain about in this chart, but I'm going
+to pick on the lower-right corner. Specifically:
+
+__Haskellers don't use Haskell because we think we're Einstein. We use
+Haskell because we know we aren't.__
+
+When I speak to Haskellers, the general consensus is: "I'm not smart
+enough to write robust code in a language like Python." We're not
+using Haskell because we're brilliant; we're using Haskell because we
+know we need a language that will protect us from ourselves.
+
+I use Haskell because (in this order):
+
+* It gives me the highest degree of confidence that I'll write my
+ program correctly, due to its strong, static typing
+* It has great support for modern programming techniques, like
+ functional programming and green-thread-based concurrency
+* I can write more maintainable code in it than other languages
+* It has a great set of
+ [libraries](https://haskell-lang.org/libraries) and
+ [tools](https://haskell-lang.org/get-started)
+* It's got great performance characteristics for high-level code, and
+ allows low-level performance tweaking when needed
+
+I'm certainly leaving off a lot of points here, my goal isn't to be
+comprehensive. Instead, I'd like to dispel with this notion of the
+Haskeller super-genius. We Haskellers don't believe it. We know why
+we're using a language like Haskell: to protect us from ourselves.
diff --git a/posts/spreading-the-gospel-of-haskell.md b/posts/spreading-the-gospel-of-haskell.md
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+Last week I fired off two tweets about the state of Haskell evangelism:
+
++I'd hoped by now we'd be out spreading the gospel of Haskell's awesome features. Instead, we're fighting about the same broken things.
— Michael Snoyman (@snoyberg) November 21, 2016
+ + +But simply complaining about the state of things, instead of actually +proposing a way to make things better, is a waste of 280 +characters. So I'd like to expand on where I think we, the Haskell +community, can do better. + +To try and prevent the flamewars which I'm sure are about to start, +let me give some guidelines on __who shouldn't read this blog post__: + +* If you think that programming languages should succeed on purely + technical merits, and silly "marketing activities" like writing + newbie-oriented tutorials and making engaging screencasts is unfair + competition, you shouldn't read this blog post. +* If you think that broken dependency solving, Hackage downtime, + confusing cabal-install incantations, and problematic global package + databases in the Haskell Platform have had no ill effect on Haskell + adoption, you shouldn't read this blog post. +* If you think that new users who give up after 5 minutes of confusion + on a website weren't serious enough in the first place and we + shouldn't be sad that we lost them, you shouldn't read this blog + post. + +And most likely, you shouldn't post this to /r/haskell. That's not +going to end well. + +## Attacking Haskell's Flaws + +As the Twitter discussion yesterday pointed out, there are undoubtedly +flaws in Haskell. It may be __inflammatory__ to admit that publicly, +but so be it. Every language has flaws. Haskell is blessed to also +have some of the greatest strengths in any programming language +available today: beautiful concurrency, a powerful _and_ useful type +system, a plethora of real-world libraries, and (as of recently) +pretty good tooling and educational resources. + +At FP Complete, we often talk about the __attractors__ and +__obstacles__ (thanks to our CEO, Aaron Contorer, for this great prism +to view things). Using that terminology: Haskell is chalk-full of +attractors. The problem is the obstacles which prevent Haskell from +taking off. I'm going to claim that, at this point, we need to do very +little as far as making Haskell more attrative, but instead need to +collectively knock down obstacles preventing its success. + +Obstacles can be a great many things, some of which you may have +categorized as "missing attractors." Let me give some examples: + +* Missing IDE tooling. For some people, this is a deal-breaker, and + will prevent them from using Haskell. +* A missing library. Again, if someone needs to access, say, MS SQL + Server, and a library doesn't exist, this is an obstacle to + adoption. (Yes, that person could go ahead and write the library + him/herself. If you think that's the right response, you probably + shouldn't be reading this blog post.) +* Lack of a tutorial/example/cookbook for a specific problem + domain. Yes, someone could struggle through reading API docs until + "it clicks." If that's your answer: also probably shouldn't be + reading this post. +* Lack of support for an OS/architecture. + +The important thing about obstacles is that they are not +universal. For most of us, lack of support for Haiku OS will not +prevent us from using Haskell. Those of us who have been using Haskell +for years have decided that the obstacles of bad tooling weren't +enough to deter us from the great language features. And so on. + +## Prioritizing + +Many people in the Haskell community have been chipping away at random +obstacles (or adding random attractors) for years now, on a hobbyist +basis. If that's all you want to do, more power to you, and +enjoy. What I'm doing here is making a call for a more concerted, +organized effort into knocking down these obstacles to Haskell +adoption. + +I'd say that we can measure how high a priority an obstacle-destroying +action is based on two criteria: + +* How difficult it will be to accomplish +* How big an impact it will have on Haskell adoption + +I would call easy actions with big impact _low hanging fruit_, and +recommend we focus on those actions for now. In other words, while +improving GHC compile times may have a big impact, it's also difficult +to accomplish. Similarly, changing the Haskell logo from purple to +blue is easy to accomplish, but doesn't have much impact. + +So my set of easy to do and big impact things entirely come down to +*spreading the word*. I would say our biggest and easiest knocked-down +obstacles are: + +* Someone's never heard of Haskell +* Someone's heard of Haskell, but doesn't know why it's relevant +* Someone's well aware of Haskell, but thinks it will be hard to start + with +* Someone's already tried Haskell and run into problems (like + Dependency Hell), and doesn't realize we've solved them + +So what does this entail? Here are my suggestions: + +* Write a blog post about how you solved a problem in Haskell +* Give a talk at a conference on what problems Haskell is particularly + good at solving (my money goes to concurrency on this) +* Put together a screencast on Haskell +* Encourage a non-Haskeller to go through the + [Haskell Book](http://haskellbook.com/) and + [Haskell Syllabus](https://www.fpcomplete.com/haskell-syllabus) + +The intention here to show the world that Haskell is ready to help +them, and that it's easy to get started now. Many of us at FP Complete +have been putting out +[such](https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/11/comparative-concurrency-with-haskell) +[posts](https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/10/static-compilation-with-stack) +[for](https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/09/practical-haskell-simple-file-mirror-1) +a +[while](https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2016/08/bitrot-free-scripts). I'm +asking others to join in the fun and help give Haskell adoption a +kick-start. + +One final request: if you've gotten this far, odds are you agree that +we need to encourage users to take the most-likely-to-succeed route to +Haskell, be that with tooling, training, library installation, or +library selection. We've put a lot of effort into making +[haskell-lang.org](https://haskell-lang.org) the destination for that +goal. Hopefully haskell.org can converge on this goal in the future, +but for now it's very likely to just present another obstacle. When +you tell people to get started with Haskell, I strongly recommend +linking to +[https://haskell-lang.org/get-started](https://haskell-lang.org/get-started). diff --git a/static/haskell-as-seen-by.png b/static/haskell-as-seen-by.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000..411c25f Binary files /dev/null and b/static/haskell-as-seen-by.png differHaskell is by far the best language on the market today. It's so sad to see it not gaining traction because of unimportant details.
— Michael Snoyman (@snoyberg) November 21, 2016