Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Cale Gibbard wrote: On 28/01/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I got referred to Haskell by an acquaintance when I happened to mention that I was interested in algebraic approaches to music theory. He referred me to Haskore. That's funny. All the times I've heard algebraic approaches to music theory mentioned, I have transitioned into a state of bliss. Hopefully, the next term (summer term here), we'll get a seminar on mathematics and music theory from one of the geometry researchers here. I'm excited already. -- Mikael Johansson | To see the world in a grain of sand [EMAIL PROTECTED]| And heaven in a wild flower http://www.mikael.johanssons.org | To hold infinity in the palm of your hand | And eternity for an hour ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On 28/01/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I got referred to Haskell by an acquaintance when I happened to mention that I was interested in algebraic approaches to music theory. He referred me to Haskore. - Cale ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I came at it from two angles: General interest in actor languages led me to Io (http://www.iolanguage.com), which used Darcs for its RCS at the time, which led me to look at the source code for it, which got me interested in Haskell. General interest in lightweight concurrency led me to STM, which is a short trip. -- Paul ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On Jan 29, 2007, at 03:01 , Alexy Khrabrov wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? Well, I didn't really stumble on it. I was at the 1987 meeting when we decided to define Haskell. But I stumbled on functional programming in the first place. I had to learn it because it was part of a course in denotational semantics. The language was SASL. And then I read David Turners paper on combinators, and I was hooked. -- Lennart ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
I'll go for the shortest story... I stumbled upon Simon's Composing Financial Contracts paper, Simon was gracious enough to spend a fair bit of time on the phone with me. The rest is history :-). Joel -- http://wagerlabs.com/ ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
In about 93 or 94 a colleague had talked to me about this wierd language called Haskell. At the time I hadn't listened because I was sure that Eiffel was the future. Besides, he had showed me a GUI demo: a calculator that took about half a second to register a button click. So I concluded that it wasn't practical. Fast forward to about 2001. I was in a job where I almost never got to do any programming. It had become painfully obvious that Eiffel wasn't going anywhere. I could always learn Java, but after Eiffel downgrading to Java felt like a sell-out: I wasn't going to do it. But I did want to learn a new language, and I'd read Eric Raymond's piece about being a hacker, where he said to learn Lisp for the side effects. I sort-of knew Lisp anyway, having done some Emacs Lisp hacking. But I felt I didn't really get it about FP. There seemed to be a lot of buzz about Haskell, so I took the plunge and started learning. Paul. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
Paul == Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Paul because I was sure that Eiffel was the future. You were right! Paul It had become painfully Paul obvious that Eiffel wasn't going anywhere. Hm. Why do I make a living at it then? And why is there now an ECMA standard for it? Paul learn Java, but after Eiffel downgrading to Java felt like a Paul sell-out: That's true. Anyway, my story about how I stumbled across Haskell: I was visiting Glasgow for the Scottish Go championships, and was talking to John O'Donnell in the bar about what functional programming was all about. I mentioned that I knew Scheme, and he said he much preferred Haskell. So I tried to get him to describe the language to me, but he seemed more interested in playing Go. So I just had to learn it when i got home again, to find out about it. -- Colin Adams Preston Lancashire ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
Lennart, Now you've made me curious. Which paper is this? Is it available for download anywhere? Mike Lennart Augustsson wrote: On Jan 29, 2007, at 03:01 , Alexy Khrabrov wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? Well, I didn't really stumble on it. I was at the 1987 meeting when we decided to define Haskell. But I stumbled on functional programming in the first place. I had to learn it because it was part of a course in denotational semantics. The language was SASL. And then I read David Turners paper on combinators, and I was hooked. -- Lennart ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
A new implementation technique for applicative languages, David A. Turner, Software — Practice and Experience, 9:31–49, 1979. I'm not sure if it's available online. -- Lennart On Feb 4, 2007, at 01:14 , Michael Vanier wrote: Lennart, Now you've made me curious. Which paper is this? Is it available for download anywhere? Mike Lennart Augustsson wrote: On Jan 29, 2007, at 03:01 , Alexy Khrabrov wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? Well, I didn't really stumble on it. I was at the 1987 meeting when we decided to define Haskell. But I stumbled on functional programming in the first place. I had to learn it because it was part of a course in denotational semantics. The language was SASL. And then I read David Turners paper on combinators, and I was hooked. -- Lennart ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? My story isn't as interesting as some of these. My first quarter in school, I took a course taught in Scheme. I expressed some dissatisfaction with the lack of types (and, in particular, the collection of bugs that would have been easily caught with one), and the grad TA pointed me to ML. Some time later, I was talking to another prof. in the hall about ML, and an older guy walking by suggested that I was wasting my time and should go learn Haskell. At the time, the most obvious tutorial was the Gentle Introduction, which left me confused for about a year or so, but eventually (and I have no memory the trigger), I started writing code in Haskell and was completely hooked. (Incidentally, I eventually found out who the older guy was - Doug McIlroy - and he ended up advising my honors work. All in all, a very convenient meeting.) /g ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I was thinking that my story wasn't particularly interesting, but then again, I may be the only person on this list who can actually give a properly-cited publication as an answer to the question how did you learn Haskell?: Patricia Johann and Franklyn Turbak, Lumberjack Summer Camp: A Cross-Institutional Undergraduate Research Experience in Computer Science, Computer Science Education 11(4), Dec. 2001. - http://cs.wellesley.edu/~fturbak/pubs/cse01.pdf The shorter answer is, I got paid to learn it, when I was an undergrad, and so I find those of you with real jobs and real lives who learn new languages in their copious free time with no particular extrinsic motivation for it to be particularly admirable. Cheers, Kirsten -- Kirsten Chevalier* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Often in error, never in doubt Relax. I'm weird, not violent.--Brad Boesen, _Disturbed_ ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
What's folks most interesting ways to arrive at FP? Mine isn't most interesting. I did some interesting (I think so) research in visualisation and coded it in C. Then I tried to extend it - speed it up, add more features, etc, - and found C unsatisfactory. It is error prone and C programs cannot be modified easily. Then I tried some macro languages, M4 and like, again without satisfaction - the same modification failures. No one can keep things tied up for me. Then I search and roam, I left my visualisation research behind programming languages field and found Haskell. It got me by syntax then by type system. I still hope I'll return to visualisation research. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
After many years of OO Perl, I looked at Python. Within fifteen minutes I had switched, and I never looked back at Perl. A few years later, I had a need to hack into the Python interpreter. While reading up on that, I came across references to Haskell. I soon realized that everything I liked about Python had been borrowed from Haskell in diluted form. -Yitz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On Jan 29, 2007, at 9:53 AM, Yitzchak Gale wrote: After many years of OO Perl, I looked at Python. Within fifteen minutes I had switched, and I never looked back at Perl. A few years later, I had a need to hack into the Python interpreter. While reading up on that, I came across references to Haskell. I soon realized that everything I liked about Python had been borrowed from Haskell in diluted form. I do not think you are entirely right here; a lot of things were borrowed from a language called ABC, developed by Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton at the CWI as a substitute for Basic. See: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/abc/ Doaitse -Yitz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
I wrote: I soon realized that everything I liked about Python had been borrowed from Haskell in diluted form. Doaitse Swierstra wrote: I do not think you are entirely right here; a lot of things were borrowed from a language called ABC, See: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/abc/ True. I wasn't claiming that most of Python itself came from Haskell; just the things I liked most about it. But you're still right - there are probably things that I liked about Python that didn't really come from Haskell - but Haskell has them, nonetheless. I wonder if ABC's layout rules were inspired by ML and/or Landin's off-side rule, or were developed independently. Regards, Yitz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
Hi,
I was working in embedded development, writing lots of C code. My
primary tool for debugging things was turning an LED on or off. So, I
became quite interested in figuring out how to write code with less
bugs.
After some searching, I found lclint, (now knows as splint:
http://lclint.cs.virginia.edu/). lclint performs static analysis on C
code to find things like uninitialized variables, memory leaks, and
tons of other stuff. In order to get the most out of it, I had to
annotate my code like this:
extern char *gname;
extern /[EMAIL PROTECTED]@*/ isNull (/[EMAIL PROTECTED]@*/char *x);
void setName(/[EMAIL PROTECTED]@*/ char *pname)
{
if (!isNull (pname)) { gname = pname; }
}
Although marking up the code was a bit tedious, the amount of errors
that it caught was astounding. And, typically, my code actually worked
on the first try after I fixed anything lclint complained about.
I decided that this thing static error analysis stuff was pretty
spiffy and set out to look for a language that had it built-in by
default. I originally started with Concurrent Clean 1.x, but
eventually settled on Haskell (GHC 5.04) for reasons I do not
remember. I think it may have been because Haskell seemed to have a
bigger, more active community (which is still true today).
j.
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I've taught ML at UPenn, and many For some diversity ... For years I'd been using (and largely happy with) pure fortran with a little tcl thrown in for scripting. I'd played around with a few other languages for kicks (Java, Lisp, c++), but never really found anything to pull me away from fortran for good: it's easy, insanely portable, and code I wrote in 1988 still works without modification. About 2 years ago I ran into a stability problem while taking numeric derivatives. In a moment of inspired procrastination, instead of properly fixing the problem I decided that I needed 'automatic differentiation'. Google. A series of fantastic papers by Jerzy Karczmarczuk. Wow. Google. GHC. Can't get it installed on my mac laptop. Stop. Months pass. (probably more like a year) In a later moment of procrastination, I find John Hughes' Why functional programming matters. After seeing Romberg integration implemented in a handful of lines, I was hooked. But the real kicker was the performance of GHC -- after getting it installed I benchmarked the Hughes's code against a Fortran integrator. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the execution times were within a factor of a few of each other (I was expecting 2-3 orders of magnitude). While I'm not yet entirely sold on the practicality of the language (things move very fast, and it seems to be very difficult for me to stick with haskell98), it's just too much fun to not use. I'm now using it daily in a scripting role and one-offs, and I'm seriously considering using it over fortran in a new workstation analysis code. (Actually, the 'fun' aspect of it is providing a just a *bit* of motivation ...) Cheers, -david k. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
I find it odd when people talk about portability in languages. Form me that has always been a given (I started my first language, c++ in 2002). I got into Haskell and FP in general when I took advanced languages at my uni and I still write haskell java and c++ regularly. On 1/29/07, David Kirkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I've taught ML at UPenn, and many For some diversity ... For years I'd been using (and largely happy with) pure fortran with a little tcl thrown in for scripting. I'd played around with a few other languages for kicks (Java, Lisp, c++), but never really found anything to pull me away from fortran for good: it's easy, insanely portable, and code I wrote in 1988 still works without modification. About 2 years ago I ran into a stability problem while taking numeric derivatives. In a moment of inspired procrastination, instead of properly fixing the problem I decided that I needed 'automatic differentiation'. Google. A series of fantastic papers by Jerzy Karczmarczuk. Wow. Google. GHC. Can't get it installed on my mac laptop. Stop. Months pass. (probably more like a year) In a later moment of procrastination, I find John Hughes' Why functional programming matters. After seeing Romberg integration implemented in a handful of lines, I was hooked. But the real kicker was the performance of GHC -- after getting it installed I benchmarked the Hughes's code against a Fortran integrator. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the execution times were within a factor of a few of each other (I was expecting 2-3 orders of magnitude). While I'm not yet entirely sold on the practicality of the language (things move very fast, and it seems to be very difficult for me to stick with haskell98), it's just too much fun to not use. I'm now using it daily in a scripting role and one-offs, and I'm seriously considering using it over fortran in a new workstation analysis code. (Actually, the 'fun' aspect of it is providing a just a *bit* of motivation ...) Cheers, -david k. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
RE: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
From: Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell? Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 19:01:57 -0800 How do people stumble on Haskell? -- snip What's folks most interesting ways to arrive at FP? Cheers, Alexy I have been programming other stuff for years (APL, C, Assembly, Visual Basic, Java, C#) and a year or two ago I started thinking of going back to study computing a bit more formally. Reading web pages of lecturers on courses that looked interesting I found a few whose favorite language was a functional programming language called Haskell. I didn't know anything about functional programming so I just moved on. More recently I started to work my way through 'Modern compiler implementation in Java' by Andrew Appel and he seemed keen on functional programming and the book covers extending the basic language to a functional programming language. (I have have read the relevant chapter but not got as far as implementing it yet!) Just before Christmas I decided to investigate Haskell. I got hold of a copy of Graham Hutton's new book 'Programming in Haskell', which I am thoroughly enjoying. Haskell is great fun but as I dig deeper I am finding my lack of mathematical sophistication to be a problem. This leads me off thread to ask if anyone could recommend reading for someone who has done mathematics to college level, but nearly 30 years ago when many English schools didn't cover 20th century mathematics. I thought calculus was about differentiation and integration and was very surprised to discover that there were such things as 'predicate calculus', 'propositional calculus', and various flavours of 'lambda calculus'. I also have little or no idea of set theory, group theory, domain theory, combinatory logic, ... (I can just imagine the surprised looks on the faces of the mathematicians reading this. You never know computer programmers could be so ignorant, did you?) I have no idea how much of this stuff I need to know but I would certainly like to be able to learn more of this facinating new world and not just be content with learning how to write a Haskell program. I just don't know where to start. Thanks, Bob Davison _ Turn searches into helpful donations. Make your search count. http://click4thecause.live.com/search/charity/default.aspx?source=hmemtagline_donationFORM=WLMTAG ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
Bob Davison wrote: I thought calculus was about differentiation and integration and was very surprised to discover that there were such things as 'predicate calculus', 'propositional calculus', and various flavours of 'lambda calculus'. The stuff involving rates of change, integration, and differentiation, is often called differential calculus, or simply the calculus. But calculus more generically refers to any system of calculation. So the lambda calculus, the various flavours of calculus in symbolic logic, and so on, don't have the word calculus in their names because they're related to differential calculus or to each other, but because they're systematic ways to approach calculation. I have no idea how much of this stuff I need to know Very little, but exactly how much, and of what, depends on what you want to do. Having a slight grounding in algorithm analysis, an appreciation of induction, and a bottomless pot of coffee is enough to get started. but I would certainly like to be able to learn more of this facinating new world and not just be content with learning how to write a Haskell program. If you want a good grounding in thinking about functional code, I like Okasaki's Purely Functional Data Structures. Graham, Knuth and Patashnik's Concrete Mathematics is a good CS-related book that covers a lot of ground at a leisurely pace. b ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 07:01:57PM -0800, Alexy Khrabrov wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I've taught ML at UPenn, and many specific story elided What's folks most interesting ways to arrive at FP? You want weird? I was referred here by the Unlambda Manual. Oh if I ignore the syntax and squint right unlambda is Really Really Good. Oh wait, this language Madore mentions in passing eliminates the need for squinting. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On 1/28/07, Alexy Khrabrov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? Read Ullman's book on ML. Look at Haskell at that point, but was insufficiently mathematically sophisticated to get it (hey, I was sixteen). Wrote numerical analysis code in Forth for a year or so. Hacked on a several hundred thousand line FORTRAN 77 codebase. Wrote the simulation code for my physics thesis in C. Decided I never wanted to instantiate, destroy, or otherwise manage memory ever again. Had a hate-hate relationship with MATLAB, decided Mathematica was rubbish. Remembered Haskell. Now creating the programmatic equivalent of a cyborg, hunchback puppeteer to control a Java image analysis program in Scheme. So of course the best work I've done has been completely analytic mathematical physics without reference to computing of any kind. And I'm a biologist. This is known as being born in the Random monad. -- Frederick Ross Graduate Fellow, (|Siggia + |McKinney)/sqrt(2) Lab The Rockefeller University Je ne suis pas Fred Cross! ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] How did you stumble on Haskell?
On Sun, 2007-28-01 at 19:01 -0800, Alexy Khrabrov wrote: How do people stumble on Haskell? I was working at a company I won't name on a product line that was collapsing under the weight of C++, mismanagement and the typical arch-conservatism of practicing programmers (for whom UNIX is still fresh and new). I was burning out rapidly as I foresaw the impending collapse of the company and was trying to figure out how to regain the love I used to have for my job. I decided that the technology we were using was part of the problem (and likely the indirect source of all the other problems like the management ones) and started looking at alternatives including Modula-3, Dylan, ML dialects, Erlang, etc. While investigating the MLs I stumbled across a reference (somewhat disparaging) to Haskell and lazy evaluation. I followed up on it (because the disparaging comment looked clannish to me) and looked at Haskell more closely. At the time I rejected Haskell as being too academic-oriented in favour of Dylan. Not long after that I gave up on software in general and took a nearly six-year break. During that time, as I relocated my initial love for programming, I looked at Haskell again and it took this time. -- Michael T. Richter Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]; YIM: michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I find many of the machines of violence very attractive. Tanks, airplanes, warships, especially aircraft carriers. And the German U-boats, submarines. --The Dalai Lama signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
