[Haskell-cafe] Open-source projects for beginning Haskell students?

[Jason Dagit]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 1:09 PM, Brent Yorgey <byorgey at seas.upenn.edu>wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 11:50:38AM -0700, Ben wrote:
> >
> > On Mar 11, 2013, at 11:26 AM, Jason Dagit wrote:
> >
> > > Myself and several of my friends would find it useful to have a
> plotting library that we can use from ghci to quickly/easily visualize
> data. Especially if that data is part of a simulation we are toying with.
> Therefore, this proposal is for: A gnuplot-, matlab- or plotinum-like
> plotting API (that uses diagrams as the backend?). The things to emphasize:
> > >   * Easy to install: No gtk2hs requirement. Preferably just pure
> haskell code and similar for any dependencies. Must be cross platform.
> > >   * Frontend: graphs should be easy to construct; customizability is
> not as important
> > >   * Backend: options for generating static images are nice, but for
> the use case we have in mind also being able to render in a window from
> ghci is very valuable. (this could imply something as purely rendering to
> JuicyPixels and I could write the rendering code)
> > >
> > > * What I would hope from you is a willingness to exchange email and/or
> > >   chat with the student(s) over the course of the project, to give
> > >   them a bit of guidance/mentoring.  I am certainly willing to help on
> > >   that front, but of course I probably don't know much about your
> > >   particular project.
> > >
> > > I am willing/able to take on the mentoring aspect :)
> >
> > i second this, but with a different emphasis.  i would like a
> ggplot2-type DSL for generating graphs, for data analysis and exploration.
>  i agree with :
> >
> > * it would be great to have no gtk2hs / cairo requirement.  (i guess
> this means text rendering in the diagrams-svg backend needs to be solved.)
>  i guess in the near-term, this is less important to me -- having a proper
> plotting DSL at all is an important start.
> >
> > * frontend : graphs should be easy to construct, but having some
> flexibility is important.  the application here is being able to explore
> statistical data, with slicing, grouping, highlighting, faceting, etc.
> >
> > * backend : static images are enough for me, interactive is a plus.
>  most importantly : it should be fast enough to work pleasantly with large
> datasets.  ggplot2 is pretty awesome but kills my machine, routinely.
>
> Not to throw cold water on these ideas (which sound fantastic!), but
> the scope of this sounds more like a GSoC project than something a
> beginner could accomplish in 10-15 hours in the space of a few weeks.
> I'm looking not for project ideas but for small, concrete
> contributions they could make to existing open source projects.
>

Good point. Perhaps the project I mentioned could be broken up into
suitable tasks? For example, if the students just worked on the frontend
portion it would still be useful as a starting point for others.

Jason
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20130311/bb9687bd/attachment.htm>