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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20081001
Issue 87 - October 01, 2008
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Welcome to issue 87 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
[1]Haskell community.
ICFP was held last week in Victoria, and by all accounts was a great
success! This edition of the HWN includes much ICFP and Haskell
Symposium-related content, including [2]videos of the Haskell symposium
presentations, [3]programming contest results, some [4]notes on the
future of Haskell, and slides from [5]a Haskell tutorial and [6]a talk
about the Haskell Platform. But ICFP didn't seem to slow down the
community all that much: you'll find the usual mix of newly released
and updated packages, blog posts, mailing list discussions, and silly
quotes as well.
Announcements
Haskell-Embedded System Design: ForSyDe 3.0 and Tutorial. Alfonso
Acosta [7]announced the [8]3.0 release of [9]ForSyDe. The ForSyDe
(Formal System Design) methodology has been developed with the
objective to move system design (e.g. System on Chip, Hardware and
Software systems) to a higher level of abstraction. ForSyDe is
implemented as a Haskell-embedded behavioral DSL (Domain Specific
Language). The 3.0 release includes a new deep-embedded DSL and
embedded compiler, as well as a new user-friendly tutorial.
Graphalyze-0.1. Ivan Miljenovic [10]announced the initial release of
his graph-theoretic analysis library, [11]Graphalyze. This is a
pre-release of the library he is writing for his mathematics honours
thesis, "Graph-Theoretic Analysis of the Relationships in Discrete
Data".
Symposium videos. Malcolm Wallace [12]announced [13]guerrilla videos of
the Haskell Symposium 2008 presentations.
ICFP programming contest results. Malcolm Wallace [14]sent a link to
[15]a video of the ICFP programming contest results presentation.
Version 0.4.3 of happs-tutorial is a HAppS job board, done in HAppS..
Thomas Hartman [16]announced version 4 of the [17]self-demoing HAppS
tutorial, a HAppS job board.
TH code for deriving Binary and NFData instances. Tim Newsham
[18]announced some [19]Template Haskell code for automatically deriving
Data.Binary and Control.Parallel.Strategies.NFData instances.
Notes on the future of Haskell from ICFP. Bryan O'Sullivan [20]posted a
[21]writeup from the ICFP conference floor on the future of Haskell and
functional programming.
datapacker 1.0.1. John Goerzen [22]announced the [23]release of
datapacker 1.0.1.
A Functional Implementation of the Garsia-Wachs Algorithm. Nicolas
Pouillard [24]announced a [25]Haskell implementation of an algorithm
that builds a binary tree with minimum weighted path length from
weighted leaf nodes given in symmetric order. This can be used to build
optimum search tables, to balance a 'ropes' data structure in an
optimal way.
graphviz-2008.9.20. Ivan Miljenovic [26]announced a new version of
[27]Matthew Sackman's Haskell bindings to Graphviz. See Ivan's original
announcement for information on what new features are included, and
what the difference is among the various graphviz-related packages on
Hackage.
darcs 2.1.0pre2. Eric Kow [28]announced the release of darcs 2.1.0pre2,
formerly known as 2.0.3. See Eric's announcement for a list of new
features and bug fixes in this release.
protocol-buffers-0.2.9 for Haskell is ready. ChrisK [29]announced the
release of the [30]protocol-buffers package, which generates Haskell
data types that can be converted back and forth to lazy ByteStrings
that interoperate with Google's generated code in C++/Java/python.
panda blog engine. Jinjing Wang [31]announced the release of [32]panda,
a simple blog engine written in Haskell.
OpenSPARC project applicant chosen. Duncan Coutts [33]announced that
Ben Lippmeier has been chosen for the [34]OpenSPARC project. Ben will
spend three months hacking on GHC to make it perform well on the latest
multi-core OpenSPARC chips.
Hugs on the iPhone. Alberto Galdo [35]announced that he has gotten Hugs
to run on the iPhone, and has made packages available for others who
would like to install it as well.
Discussion
Shooting yourself in the foot in Haskell. John Van Enk [36]asked how to
shoot yourself in the foot with Haskell, with humorous results.
Total Functional Programming in Haskell. Jason Dagit started a
[37]discussion on total functional programming, Haskell, abstraction
boundaries and the IO monad, and related topics.
Health effects. Andrew Coppin told a [38]story about a chocolate bar
and recursion, which led to a discussion of optimization problems,
Dedekind cuts, some meta-discussion of the discussion, and entirely too
many puns.
The container problem. Andrew Coppin [39]asked about the possibility if
abstracting over various sorts of containers in Haskell, and why there
isn't a widely used library that does this. A discussion of various
container libraries and the language issues that arise followed.
Red-Blue Stack. Matthew Eastman [40]asked how to implement a certain
data structure (red-blue stacks) in Haskell. Several people responded
with increasingly clever solutions, and a comparison of mutating vs.
non-mutating algorithms.
Climbing up the shootout.... Don Stewart began a long and ongoing
[41]discussion about improving Haskell's performance on benchmarks in
the [42]Shootout, now that there is a quad core machine for running
benchmarks!
Line noise. Andrew Coppin started an [43]interesting discussion about
perceptions of Haskell syntax by programmers who aren't familiar with
it.
Jobs
London FP job in asset management. Michael Bott [44]announced an
opportunity for two functional programmers based in London, with a
software house specialising in asset management.
Blog noise
[45]Haskell news from the [46]blogosphere.
* Creighton Hogg: [47]Some first steps with Data.Reactive. Creighton
gives some simple examples of using Conal Elliott's Reactive
library. More to come!
* Bryan O'Sullivan: [48]Unix hacking in Haskell: better
pseudoterminal support.
* Creighton Hogg: [49]One last thought on laziness. In Creighton's
opinion, laziness is the single hardest thing to get used to in
Haskell. If you're learning Haskell, don't despair, break out the
pencil and paper!
* Douglas M. Auclair (geophf): [50]Animal as RDR, part III.
* Neil Mitchell: [51]General Updates.
* Don Stewart (dons): [52]Newest Mersenne Prime. Haskell doesn't even
break a sweat computing the largest known prime number.
* Douglas M. Auclair (geophf): [53]Animal as RDR, part II.
* Bryan O'Sullivan: [54]Using Bloom filters for large scale gene
sequence analysis in Haskell. A paper that Bryan and Ketil Malde
submitted to PADL 09. "The Cliff's Notes version: Bloom filters are
almost unused in bioinformatics; they're tremendously useful; and
our Haskell code is really fast.
* >>> Zubin Wadia: [55]Simon Peyton Jones & Microsoft Research
Cambridge. Zubin thinks quite highly of SPJ and MSR Cambridge.
* Bryan O'Sullivan: [56]Slides from my DEFUN 2008 Haskell tutorial.
* Mads Lindstroem: [57]Inheritance in Composites and Overlapping
Instances.
* >>> Micah Cowan: [58]Adventures in Haskell. Micah shares some
thoughts on learning Haskell.
* Bryan O'Sullivan: [59]Some notes on the future of Haskell and FP.
* Well-Typed.Com: [60]Slides from the Haskell Platform talk.
* Paul Johnson: [61]Why the banks collapsed, and how a paper on
Haskell programming can help stop it happening next time.
* >>> Nathan Sanders: [62]Two weeks of Haskell. Nathan shares some
thoughts on his first two weeks learning Haskell.
* Bryan O'Sullivan: [63]Twittering from ICFP / Haskell symposium /
CUFP.
* Real-World Haskell: [64]Slides from ACCU talk.
* Eric Kow (kowey): [65]darcs weekly news #5.
* John Goerzen (CosmicRay): [66]New version of datapacker.
* >>> James Cowie: [67]Haskell, the verdict!. James is impressed with
Haskell after using it for a few weeks.
* >>> Alex Combas: [68]What's all this fuss about Haskell?. Alex is
thinking of learning Haskell in his spare time.
* Aaron Tomb: [69]Parsing the Linux kernel with Haskell: experience
with Language.C. Aaron is impressed by the new Language.C
libraries, which parses all 18 million pre-processed lines of Linux
kernel source with no problems!
Quotes of the Week
* Fuse_: Oh, sorry for hijacking mathematical purity with dirty
fiscal dynamical systems. :o
* mauke: <mauke> data Mushroom badger = Mushroom badger badger badger
badger badger badger badger badger badger <leimy> where's the snake
<mauke> deriving Snake
* ddarius: higher order of lambdabot deployment and management
engineers or HOLDME
* Botje: #haskell: parallellising your homework answers!
* olsner: most everything gives nicer everything than perl
* Botje: fuzzy feelings aren't always aerodynamic, unfortunately.
* chrisdone: benchmarks only exist to make fun of ruby
* Claus Reinke: [on breaking code up into smaller bits] Once your
readers understand your code, you can add the one-liner and ask for
applause.
* Jake Mcarthur: A fold by any other name would smell as sweet.
* lispy: Schroedinger's cat is really in a thunk not a box
* Bulat: Haskell was developed with goal to hide implementation
details from egg-headed scientists and this obviously should have
some drawbacks
About the Haskell Weekly News
New editions are posted to [70]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
[71]the Haskell Sequence and [72]Planet Haskell. [73]RSS is also
available, and headlines appear on [74]haskell.org.
To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
information on [75]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at cis
dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
[76]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .
References
1. http://haskell.org/
2. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Video_presentations/Haskell_Symposium_2008
3. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4697764813432201693
4.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/26/some-notes-on-the-future-of-haskell-and-fp/
5.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/27/slides-from-my-defun-2008-haskell-tutorial/
6. http://blog.well-typed.com/2008/09/slides-from-the-haskell-platform-talk/
7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16443
8. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/ForSyDe
9. http://www.ict.kth.se/org/ict/ecs/sam/projects/forsyde/www/
10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16442
11. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Graphalyze
12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16440
13. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Video_presentations/Haskell_Symposium_2008
14. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16438
15. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4697764813432201693
16. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45332
17. http://happstutorial.com:5001/
18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45305
19. http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/store/DeriveBinary.hs
20. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45272
21.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/26/some-notes-on-the-future-of-haskell-and-fp/
22. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45185
23. http://changelog.complete.org/posts/760-New-version-of-datapacker.html
24. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45002
25. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/garsia-wachs
26. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/44863
27. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/graphviz
28. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-September/048094.html
29. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/44845
30.
http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/protocol-buffers
31. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/44840
32. http://jinjing.blog.easymic.com/
33. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/44836
34. http://haskell.org/opensparc/
35. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-September/047838.html
36. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-October/048506.html
37. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45393
38. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45370
39. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45242
40. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45122
41. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/44916
42. http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all
43. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/44886
44. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/45506
45. http://planet.haskell.org/
46. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles
47.
http://abstractabsurd.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-first-steps-with-datareactive.html
48.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/30/unix-hacking-in-haskell-better-pseudoterminal-support/
49.
http://abstractabsurd.blogspot.com/2008/09/one-last-thought-on-laziness.html
50. http://logicaltypes.blogspot.com/2008/09/animal-as-rdr-part-iii.html
51. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/09/general-updates.html
52. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2008/09/30#primes
53. http://logicaltypes.blogspot.com/2008/09/animal-as-rdr-part-ii.html
54.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/28/using-bloom-filters-for-large-scale-gene-sequence-analysis-in-haskell/
55. http://zwadia.com/?p=58
56.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/27/slides-from-my-defun-2008-haskell-tutorial/
57.
http://lindstroem.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/inheritance-in-composites-and-overlapping-instances/
58.
http://micah.cowan.name/2008/09/26/computers/software-development/adventures-in-haskell/
59.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/26/some-notes-on-the-future-of-haskell-and-fp/
60. http://blog.well-typed.com/2008/09/slides-from-the-haskell-platform-talk/
61.
http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-banks-collapsed-and-how-paper-on.html
62. http://sandersn.com/blog/index.php?title=two_weeks_of_haskell
63.
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2008/09/25/twittering-from-icfp-haskell-symposium-cufp/
64. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/09/25/slides-from-accu-talk/
65. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2008/09/darcs-weekly-news-5.html
66. http://changelog.complete.org/posts/760-New-version-of-datapacker.html
67. http://www.jcowie.co.uk/2008/09/haskell-the-verdict/
68. http://combas3d.com/2008/09/whats-all-this-fuss-about-haskell/
69.
http://www.galois.com/blog/2008/09/17/parsing-the-linux-kernel-with-haskell-experience-with-languagec/
70. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
71. http://sequence.complete.org/
72. http://planet.haskell.org/
73. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
74. http://haskell.org/
75. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
76. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/
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