Is Haskell + NixOS Really? A Dream.

I’ve always been a professional skeptic at heart. 💙

My followers — You have followed, seen, and noticed me at my best and my worst.

I thank you for that! 🙏

We often focus our attention on many deep topics in every article that we have previously published.

We publish our articles for others to enjoy reading.

We enjoy exploring various unique code & design hobbies and often dream up some exciting solutions all written by hand.

We’ve opted for a less complex and more realistic perspective on life.

My content is original.

Nobody can deny the creepiness AI may bring to us in the future.

Our Life, and Career, is our own, so we have to be aware of dangers presented by AI and hope for a healthy balance of trust in the world of the internet.

Or at least, we hope AI does or will do more good than harm.

We understand, AI is experimenting with real time updating and connection to the internet.

Let’s not forget, AI doesn’t accurately credit sources… so until that has been resolved.

Well. You have guessed it!

Google Search results are toasted. I’m a proud owner none-the-less.

But, Trying to get your business off the ground.

Well you are out of luck!

Now-a-days, you better be marketing your business as AI powered to get any attention at all on the interweb’s.

At the time of writing this article the AI bubble may be over — Yay! or better described as a wave of zombies, that have just had a slow period up until the next phase is about to begin rolling out. 😀

Anyway’s, let us get back to our dreamy code, in the most recent developments — I’ve decided to yet again explore another new programming language.

If you were previously around you may recognize the following article Exploring Elixir For The First Time — feel free to read more!

In the mean time! We thank you for sticking around!

Let’s dive into more pure functional programming language.

What is functional programming with Haskell and NixOS?

Functional programming is a set of pure functions — which declare instructions to a program or application.

In Haskell, we first need to setup a few definitions.

Next we need to acquire a Haskell toolchain to compile these instructions.

A common rule when writing Haskell is you must not use the same name variables in the source code of a Haskell file.

By avoiding same names it will prevent clashes in the Haskell Toolchain compiler.

The second rule — is definition Names need to start with a lowercase letter.

Not, “Names” but instead all the definitions must be described as “names”.

How do you execute Haskell?

The entry point of the program can be bound to a definition named Main.

This is similar with other programming languages like Rust but remember when writing Haskell — you must follow the two additional rules mentioned before or you should at the very least expect compiler errors.

The main definition should be lowercase and start in the source file.

However, the source file “name.hs” can be capital case, the definitions declared are the only requirement expecting lowercase.

You will need to use an installed version of the Haskell Toolchain to compile your main program into an executable or run the source file!

runghc

Feel free to download the official Haskell Toolchain for your operating system, however this is were NixOS comes into play.

Let the dream begin.

How do you work with Haskell + NixOS?

We recommend you install **nixOS** first before moving forward. You will need this for working with both Haskell and your source files.

Next, you will want to setup your own bash script with an extension .sh with the correct bash permissions to execute on your system.

The script we are going to use will create a nix-shell environment were you will be able to install the Official Haskell Toolchain within an isolated environment.

To help make running everything easier, I’ve written a Gist.

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Congratulations! You’ve successfully setup an NixOS nix-shell environment and compiled the Haskell Toolchain compiler into an executable!

A Dreamy Ending…💭

Learning Haskell is delightful but is it a really a dream…

Well, being able to compile a full language Toolchain in my terminal without downloading or filling up my SSD with more extra tools sure does seem like a dream!

Many communities and members of Haskell exist on the internet.

I believe the creators on the web need to take back power and prevent the web from being a horrible place to exist.

If those same creators want to work on AI generating —They can fully continue their efforts but it shouldn’t disrupt an entire industry or collapse a safe space.

Try keeping AI and original businesses separate.

Competition has been difficult enough for years online but if all the internet eyeballs go fully onto AI, then no-one actually gets to see the creative works or original businesses the internet has to offer.

If you haven’t noticed, original trusted sources are being hidden away by user experience’s in the format of chatbots and all the wonderful web developer artwork — designs and creations are slowly being affected by less impressions all due to the convenience of chat over visual displays.

This makes it difficult on designers to create work that is meaningful and even limits the reach of creative ideas.

In conclusion

Hopefully you have found this article to be insightful and delightful!

Happy Programming — We don’t mind — which programming language you choose to use or the tool you current use.

Just make amazing things for people! 🤓

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