Farewell for now XMonad

For the last 3 months or so I’ve been using Xmonad on my Arch box. Its been greater. Its a super powerful window manager, with #limitlesspotential to do anything and everything you could want on a linux desktop …but you have to have the skills to do it!

Xmonad is a Haskell application. At first this excited me. I don’t know of any other Haskell based apps which I used on a daily. I thought, “this is a great opportunity to learn Haskell” and it certainly is exactly that. The configuration files are just Haskell source code, which is very appealing as that means you are in full control of the behaviour of the WM.

Haskell however, does not lend itself nicely towards “mere mortals”. It has a reputation for hardcore programming for a reason. Although the core of the language is simple in nature - everything is a function, so lazy evaluation is taken to a next level - the building blocks for putting functions together can be head spinning, lots of new funky punctuation.

For me, not currently working daily in Haskell and with only a rudimentary understanding of the language and ecosystem, this WM doesn’t quite suit that sweet spot in my life currently. I know for sure when I have the time and dedication to learn Haskell completely, once and for all, XMonad is going to be a super convenient testing bed for experimenting.

You might be thinking, but why does it matter so much, if you have a good core config (which I do at this point) then just leave it as is and work with it. Well to that I would remind you that I am a tinkerer. I want to be able to change ANYTHING at any time in the systems I work in. This is why I’m a huge fan of Neovim and its boundless opportunities for expansion.

This does lead me onto where I’m headed next. Neovim have taken the decision to give Lua first-class support in the environment, so I’ve changed over to using 100% Lua for my nvim config. I plan to write an article here on my transition to being Lua based, but in short, Lua is nice. Very fast, very simple.

Conveniently there is a Window Manager which is Lua based. Awesome!

No really, its called Awesome. So let us see how a full Lua based experience feels from WM up to text editor. Watch this space.

But for now, fare ye well XMonad. I bare you no ill will, and I am sure our paths will cross once again.