Reframe/Remove/Update Random section

[desjardinsalec]

Is your content edit request related to a problem? Please describe.
I think the random section needs to be updated or removed.

Describe the solution you'd like

1. Outright removal seems excessive, but an option nonetheless.

2. Reframe it and mark as legacy.

3. Update it to latest Random and rewrite entire section.

I have not been around Haskell long enough to make a "informed" recommendation, but it seems there are better alternatives to System.Random which is why marking as legacy might be for the best until someone decides to rewrite the section.

I personally enjoyed reading the section even though I couldn't put pen to paper since I didn't feel like messing with Cabal.

Link to the page in question
https://learnyouahaskell.github.io/input-and-output.html

Suggestion:

This section uses System.Random, which is no longer included with GHC by default and requires installing the random package. If you’d rather not deal with package management yet, feel free to skip this section — it’s included mainly for historical interest and intuition.

[ulysses4ever]

I don't think there's any problem with System.Random per se. What GHC includes or does not include is a separate concern that we could discuss of course. Are you referring to the ramdom package being dropped from the boot libraries at around GHC 8.4? This might be unfortunate for us, yes, because LYAH mostly avoids discussing Haskell packages: the current text makes use of bytestring/containers/mtl and only touches upon packaging when it mentions mtl for the first time in https://learnyouahaskell.github.io/for-a-few-monads-more.html, and even there it mentions Haskell Platform that has been long dead (I think).

The right way to go about it is probably to have a Note or a subsection somewhere in the intro that will give a one-liner to enter a REPL (GHCi) with random available (cabal repl -b random or stack alternative).

I have a bigger plan for continuous testing of the examples in the book. But this will take some time to design and implement.

[desjardinsalec]

The right way to go about it is probably to have a Note or a subsection somewhere in the intro that will give a one-liner to enter a REPL (GHCi) with random available (cabal repl -b random or stack alternative).

Intro meaning the beginning of the book or the randomness section? I like adding the workaround. This is what I ended up doing anyways. I think adding to randomness section makes more sense.

I am not familiar enough, but looking at some of the doc, I thought functions like uniformR are more preferred to randomR. Only reason I suggested a rewrite.

[ulysses4ever]

Right, there was an overhaul of the random API, and new functions are preferred but there are catches, like for some simple use cases I think the old API is still more convenient. This is another issue. I need some more time to think about it but I think as long as the examples compile with the latest versions of the package, it's not too bad.

I'd be against removing a section on randomness because it's a standard topic in pretty much any introductory book I can think of.

Adding a note about packages may need to be done at some central location (e.g. the intro to the book) and then briefly reminded about in particular chapters that use packages other than base. This makes sense to me because currently there are several packages that are used in different chapters, and all of them require pretty much the same solution.

[ulysses4ever]

FTR this has been raised before (in the part about availability):

• System.Random doesn't exist by default #73