Talk:WikipediaArticleDesign

Thoughts

• ' 2.4 Open and free' doesn't seem like a design decision on level of laziness and purity. Any number of other Haskell decisions would be much more important - compiled vs. interpreted comes to mind, as does 'static typing'... Licensing can be dealt with in the intro ('Haskell is a Free language...')
• ~~'3.1.7 Comments' can probably be folded into the layout section; conceptually, it seems to me that layout must handle comments.~~
• ~~'3.1.8 N+K Controversy' n+k patterns are a kind of pattern-matching, so they're in the wrong section to begin with. I also think they're a minor part of the language which were hardly ever used and which are going away; this is, as we Wikipedians like to say, undue emphasis. Remember, sections appear in the TOC.~~
• ~~A similar point holds for any section on implicit parameters; we're not trying to present all the weird corners of the language which people hardly ever use.~~
• ~~'3.4.2 Exceptions' Is this actually on Maybe?~~ (changed to "Awkward Squad")
• ~~'3.7.3 Distribution' is a very important topic. I suggest 2 subsections, on Cabal and Hackage separately; dunno if a third, on cabal-install, is also warranted.~~
• ~~'4. Implementations' could use organizing. It should basically be the top three compilers by popularity, and an 'Other'. So that'd be something like GHC, Hugs, and YHC or EHC/UHC. Certainly there's no call to be discussing at length with people who don't care all the details of JHC vs. LHC or HBC, or Gofer.~~
• ~~'5.3 Alex and Happy' - no Parsec? Or rather, why aren't these in the app or libraries sections with Parsec?~~
• ~~'7. Libraries and Distribution' - unclear what goes in here. Top 3 packages on Hackage in those categories with external links thereto? ~~

--Gwern 23:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Length

If all of these headings were fully fleshed-out, the resulting article would be too long. The usual technique to remedy this on Wikipedia is to take one or more of the longer sections, move its content to a separate article and replace it with a brief summary which links to the new article for that section. --Greenrd 12:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Most of the topics can probably link elsewhere. eg. one need not write a full typeclass or ADT or list comps or (hopefully) GADT article inside [[Haskell (programming language)]] - just summarize it, give a Haskell example, and maybe describe the use.

As for length, well, programming language articles tend to the large - look how large the C one is, even delegating out to articles on C99, C strings, etc. --Gwern 12:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC)