[Haskell-cafe] Microsoft PhD Scholarship at Strathclyde

[Conor McBride]

Hi Bulat, hi all,

On 10 Mar 2009, at 16:06, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> Hello Conor,
>
> Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 6:59:58 PM, you wrote:
>
>> {---------------------------------------------------------
>> -- Haskell Types with Numeric Constraints ----------------
>> ---------------------------------------------------------}
>
> are you have in mind integrating results into production ghc versions?

Subject to rigorous quality control, community approval,
and Official Permission, yes. We'll prototype first, of
course, but the Microsoft sponsorship provides an ideal
opportunity to work with GHC HQ on this. If we do a good
job (so we need a good student) it should become part of
the real deal.

Only this morning, I was lecturing on combinators for
2-dimensional layout and apologizing for the need to
manage the sizes for "perfect fitting" by "smart
constructor" abstraction rather than typing. I really
want to rectify that. I can imagine similar
considerations affect hardware design libraries too,
and goodness knows what else. Wire up numerical indexing
to parametrized monads and not only are you cooking with
gas, you might even know how much gas you're cooking with!

So, yes. It's "type-level integers that don't suck", and
associated programming techniques, to be delivered via
GHC and associated libraries. This is a real opportunity
to make a difference (and also to stare out the window
and watch the sun setting on central Glasgow, unless it's
raining, which today it isn't).

All the best

Conor