Haskell is a pretty heavy dependency when you're not using it otherwise, and whatever it other benefits, does not make for a good configuration file IMO.
I don't really know what to think about the trend among some software of having a full programming language in use in the configuration file. It seems like a good idea at first, having all that power at your disposal, but it really complicates things at times. Especially when the language in question is far from the normal languages in use. If you ever find yourself wondering why the $ or. operator was needed in someone's configuration you'll see why that's a bad idea. (yes, I know if you know haskell the reason will be clear. The point is that you shouldn't need to know details of a programming language like that to configure a WM)
Awesome isn't entirely guilt-free with its Lua configuration file, but at least Lua is similar enough to languages like Ruby and Python that you can mostly get what's going on in a config file without having learned Lua specifically.
Interesting. while i agree having a language in the configuration is not optimal, it works a brilliantly the other way around. (i.e: a good way to get more people interested in a language.). Personally, i came across tiling WM on HN, along with haskell. and tried out. had trouble configuring or rather customizing configurations, tried awesome, but ended up on xmonad anyway, after doing 5-6 chapters of LYAH. I guess given i am a python guy, lua didn't excite me as much and ended up with xmonad + haskell. And oh, all of these took a year or so. I just recently went fulltime with xmonad.
Thanks. Your points seem valid for 'normal' people. I'm so engrossed with Haskell, that I see much stranger fish than $ and ., like <=< or &&& or <$> .
It's anecdotal, mostly, but I've always seemed to have more issues getting it up-and-running. Of course, there's also confirmation bias ("See? This is harder!") and also just the fact that I got used to awesome-wm as my first tiling WM. Sort of like vim/emacs or Ruby/Python.
The biggest issue for me is that although xmonad and awesome are both completely scriptable/configurable -- one of the benefits of having conf files that are "alive" -- xmonad is configured through Haskell while awesome is done through Lua.
To me -- a security guy who can sling code from scripting languages all over the place, but doesn't do any functional programming -- Lua is much easier to understand and use. Not everyone feels this way, and a lot of the configuration is just setting variables anyway.
I know many people who swear by xmonad, some of whom even used it at my suggestion, so please don't take this as a "beware" message. Try both out, and see which you like! :)
I've been using xmonad for a few years, now. But since I'm doing Haskell for longer, still, I never though the language in xmonad as a hindrance. Quite the opposite.
As a security guy, even though you're more familiar with Lua et al, wouldn't you have a warmer fuzzy feeling with a strongly statically typed language? (I use Python every once in a while. But having to wait for the running time for detecting basic faults always gives makes me nervous.)
I don't really know what to think about the trend among some software of having a full programming language in use in the configuration file. It seems like a good idea at first, having all that power at your disposal, but it really complicates things at times. Especially when the language in question is far from the normal languages in use. If you ever find yourself wondering why the $ or. operator was needed in someone's configuration you'll see why that's a bad idea. (yes, I know if you know haskell the reason will be clear. The point is that you shouldn't need to know details of a programming language like that to configure a WM)
Awesome isn't entirely guilt-free with its Lua configuration file, but at least Lua is similar enough to languages like Ruby and Python that you can mostly get what's going on in a config file without having learned Lua specifically.