[Haskell-cafe] Master's thesis topic sought

[John A. De Goes]

Generally, a form of lenient evaluation + lazy data structures can  
provide the benefits of Haskell non-strict evaluation without the  
drawbacks. A "reimagining" of Haskell cast in this mold might make for  
a very practical thesis.

Regards,

John A. De Goes
N-Brain, Inc.
The Evolution of Collaboration

http://www.n-brain.net    |    877-376-2724 x 101

On Nov 4, 2009, at 7:29 PM, Shelby Moore wrote:

>> Hello, -Cafe,
>>
>> I'm looking for an interesting topic to hack on in my thesis.
>>
>> The thesis should be rather "theoretical"/abstract (writing a mail
>> client in Haskell is not, for example), dealing with FP or related
>> fields.
>
> The theoretical concept of how to make lazy evaluation less
> discontinuously correlated to allocation space determinism:
>
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-November/ 
> 068436.html
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/cvs-ghc/2009-October/050928.html
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/cvs-ghc/2009-November/050946.html
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/cvs-ghc/2009-November/050949.html
> (should have written "stochastic" instead of "statistical")
>
> I think this would make you a hero also if you succeed, as I see this
> problem as the main problem stopping its adoption as a mainstream
> language.
>
> The problem as I see it (Google "space leak Haskell" for examples), is
> that even a very small change in the code can cause a huge space  
> leak that
> slows the program to molasses due to paging (faults) load.  And these
> effects are not predictable or easy to reason about.  When these
> discontinuous effects occur, we have to stop our development, do
> profiling, and try to isolate the obscure cause, then restructure  
> code in
> bizzarre ways to try to get some determinism in space allocation.
>
> My abstract idea is that it should be possible to stochastically  
> throttle
> these effects, by throtting whether (and whic) thunks get cached to  
> (WH)NF
> or re-valuated on each use.
>
> I do think it is possible to teach people how to program in FP  
> succinctly
> and without making their head hurt:
>
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-November/ 
> 068564.html
>
> You may not find many people here openly expressing their interest in
> these topics, but I think there are millions of people out there who  
> would
> benefit.
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe