Haskell run-time tutorial

[Jonathan Holt]

Hi guys,

Having completed a simple parser project using
Haskell, I'm getting more and more "hooked" on
functional-programming in general and Haskell in
particular. And learning the language has been a real
treat as well, using the tutorial with occasional
peeks at the report.

However, when I'm considering undertaking more complex
projects, I realize that there is one important erea
of the Haskell language that is still pretty much a
"black-hole" for me: the run-time environment. I
honestly can't say that I completely understand how
the actual control and data flows work when a Haskel
program is executed, and I seem to be constantly
surprised by the garbage-collection, which sometimes
seems as if it doesn't work at all, and at other times
seems to do magic.

I've tried reading some of the articles related to the
design of GHC's run-time. But they don't seem to be
much help. They either assume that the reader has
prior knowledge of functional-programming run-time
environments, or get into very low-level details. And
at the end of the day, this is very confusing, and I
find terms like thunks, entries,
partial-function-applications, etc. floating in my
head hoplessly seeking anchor.

So, where can one find a good introductory book /
article on the subject?

Thanks,
  -Jony


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