[Haskell-cafe] New book: Real-World Haskell!

[Bryan O'Sullivan]

I'll condense my remaining replies to this thread into a single message, 
to save people a little noise.

Henning Thielemann:

> I guess there will also be some lines about how to write
> efficient code by using ByteString et. al.?

You bet!

> What about a public darcs repository where people can constantly download
> and review modifications?   People could even send patches to the authors (editors?).

We'll certainly consider those possibilities.  I don't know how our 
publisher will feel about them, but they've been great so far.

Alfonso Acosta:

> Existential types are a must  [...]

Yes, we'll be sure to cover existentials.  Thanks for the nudge (and 
ndm, and others too).

Hans van Thiel:

> Compared to Erlang. While other functional languages are mentioned
> occoasionally on this list, Erlang is notably absent.

I'm reluctant to do comparisons with other languages; that's too easy to 
interpret as evangelism, a game I don't want to play.  It also invites 
the plaintive cry that someone's favourite language was dissed through 
omission.

> Number two on my wish list: interfacing with Java.

The temptation to cover new and exciting material is of course strong. 
LambdaVM is both, but it's also an in-progress one-person master's 
project.  We think we'd do best to focus on libraries and extensions 
that are either distributed as standard or widely used.

> How about 'Applying Haskell' or something like that as
> the working title; what is the 'real world' anyway?

The details may vary, but it's roughly this:

newtype IO a = IO (State# RealWorld -> (# State# RealWorld, a #))

:-)

	<b