Comment by the-owlery

I've avoided Haskell, primarily because:

* hearing how difficult it is to learn, and

* recalling C++ & Java, not crazy about the idea of going back to having to specify types for everything.

But Haskell is enticing to me:

* bindings to C-libraries in general (been meaning to try GTK, and wanted to use SQLite for a small project)

* apps start-up quickly

* compiled (good performance)

What's the Haskell community like?

Is Haskell a practical language/ecosystem, or more academic-focused?