Getting a web application started in Ruby is easy because it does so much for you out of the box.

There are frameworks that make similar choices for you in Haskell as well: IHP, Yesod, etc.

I think taking two weeks to "set up" a Haskell project is a bit long but I read it as the author taking two weeks to learn enough Haskell to make two rather advanced libraries work together... which means they had to make all the little micro decisions that frameworks make for you, etc. With more experience that could've been done in less time.

If they had started with IHP I think it would've been your usual day or two.

It's enough to make Haskell really seem like a reasonable choice to "jump in with" without fear of never reaching some mundane goal.

[1] https://youtu.be/F0E0aV85GeQ?t=165s

And if I was new to Java, I wouldn't know which frameworks I wanted...

  npx create-react-app foo-app
  cd foo-app
  yarn start

That doesn’t make React great nor solve all of the issues that lie between minute 1 and v0.1 in production, but the startup is smooth and painless (for me who comes from C/C++/C#/SQL, and my javascript is at a level where beginners can still help me).

  curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
  
  cat > ./script.sh <<EOF
  #! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
  #! nix-shell <nixpkgs> -i runghc -p "ghc.withPackages (x: [ x.yesod ])"
  {-# LANGUAGE ExtendedDefaultRules #-}
  {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings    #-}
  {-# LANGUAGE QuasiQuotes          #-}
  {-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell      #-}
  {-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies         #-}
  import Yesod
  
  data App = App
  
  mkYesod "App" [parseRoutes|
    / HomeR GET
  |]
  
  instance Yesod App
  
  getHomeR = return $ object ["msg" .= "Hello!"]
  port     = 3000
  
  main = warp port App
  EOF
  
  chmod +x ./script.sh
  
  ./script.sh

And several others listed here: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_education