[Haskell-cafe] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 109 - March 14, 2009
Brent Yorgey
byorgey at seas.upenn.edu
Sat Mar 14 09:58:27 EDT 2009
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Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20090314
Issue 109 - March 14, 2009
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Welcome to issue 109 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
[1]Haskell community.
Congratulations to the authors of RWH on their [2]Jolt award! Some cool
libraries released this week (as usual), and some really cool PhD
[3]opportunities at Strathclyde. Also, it seems that I was censured
last week for not including any quotes in the HWN, which is because
tunes.org (which hosts the #haskell logs) was down while I was putting
it together. So, this time I've included quotes going back two weeks, I
HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY
Community News
Tom DuBuisson (TomMD) has [4]moved to Portland and will be starting a
PhD at Portland State soon.
Announcements
darcs fundraising drive - only $720 left to go!. Eric Kow [5]announced
that [6]donations are still being accepted to help pay for travel to
the upcoming Haskell hackathon. So far we have raised $280, so we're
almost a third of the way there. Think you can help?
Vintage BASIC 1.0. Lyle Kopnicky [7]announced the initial release of
[8]Vintage BASIC, an interpreter for microcomputer-era BASIC. Fully
unit-tested, it faithfully implements the common elements of the
language. On the web site, you can find 102 games from the classic book
BASIC Computer Games, all of which run flawlessly. Have fun!
ThreadScope: Request for features for the performance tuning of
parallel and concurrent Haskell programs. Satnam Singh [9]requested
feedback on infrastructure for logging run-time events and a graphical
viewer program called [10]ThreadScope. The goal is for these features
to make it into the next release of GHC.
torch-0.1. Yusaku Hashimoto [11]announced a new unit test framework,
[12]torch-0.1.
sparsebit 0.5 - Sparse Bitmaps for Pattern Match Coverage. Ki Yung Ahn
[13]announced the release of the [14]sparsebit library. This library
packages the functional peal paper [15]Sparse Bitmaps for Pattern Match
Coverage submitted to ICFP 2009 by Ki Yung Ahn and Tim Sheard.
happs-tutorial 0.8. Crieghton Hogg [16]announced the release of
[17]happs-tutorial 0.8, which is compatible with [18]happstack-0.2. A
number of changes have occurred in this release, including general code
cleanup, migration to the new Happstack.Server.SimpleHTTP API, and
more.
Future 1.1.0 concurrency library. ChrisK [19]announced the [20]future
package, which ought to do what C++ standard futures/promises do, plus
a bit more. The main operation is forkPromise :: IO a -> IO (Promise
a), which sets the "IO a" operation running in a fresh thread; the
eventual result can be accessed in many ways (non-blocking, blocking,
blocking with timeout).
Holumbus-MapReduce 0.0.1. Stefan Schmidt [21]announced three new
libraries: [22]Holumbus-MapReduce, [23]Holumbus-Distribution, and
[24]Holumbus-Storage, which provide tools for building distributed
systems. These libraries are used as the backbone of the [25]Holumbus
search engine.
Turbinado V0.6. Alson Kemp [26]announced the release of [27]Turbinado
0.6, a Rails-ish Model-View-Controller web serving framework for
Haskell. New features include support for CGI serving, statically
compiled Layouts, Views, and Controllers, lower case paths, support for
cookies and encrypted cookie sessions, easier installation, and support
for GHC 6.10.
iteratee-0.1.0. John Lato [28]announced the hackage release of
[29]iteratee-0.1.0. This library implements enumerators and iteratees
[30]as proposed by Oleg Kiselyov.
Harpy 0.4.4 - Runtime code generation for x86 machine code. Dirk
Kleeblatt [31]announced the release of [32]Harpy 0.4.1, a library for
runtime code generation for x86 machine code. The new release features
additional Eq instances, support for new prefetching instructions, and
some bug fixes.
Discussion
Suggestion for a Haskell mascot. Maur�cio [33]suggested using a sloth
as the Haskell mascot. If you would like to know how to say 'sloth' in
just about every language ever, read this thread.
Jobs
Microsoft PhD Scholarship at Strathclyde. Conor McBride [34]announced
another PhD opportunity at Strathclyde, sponsored by Microsoft
Research, to investigate the practical and theoretical impact of
extending Haskell's type system with numeric expressions (representing
sizes, or ranges, or costs, for example) and constraints capturing
richer safety properties than are currently managed by static typing.
Blog noise
[35]Haskell news from the [36]blogosphere.
* Braden Shepherdson: [37]Pimp Your XMonad #4: Urgency Hooks.
* Thomas M. DuBuisson: [38]Explicit Parallelism via Thread Pools.
* Ketil Malde: [39]Current developments. Ongoing development of the
biohaskell libraries for bioinformatics.
* Philip Wadler: [40]Cafe Scientifique. Philip will be giving a talk,
"Proofs are Programs: 19th Century Logic and 21st Century
Computing", on Monday in Edinburgh.
* Yi: [41]Yi 0.6.0 Release Notes.
* Alson Kemp: [42]ANNOUNCE: Turbinado V0.6.
* GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [43]Thread activity plotting.
* Real-World Haskell: [44]We won a Jolt Award!.
* Real-World Haskell: [45]Real World Haskell on the Kindle 2.
* Christophe Poucet (vincenz): [46]Bootstrapping cabal.
* Gtk2HS: [47]Mickinator File Manager.
* Osfameron: [48](rough) Grids in Haskell. Some notes on representing
2D grids in Haskell.
* Manuel M T Chakravarty: [49]These graphs summarise the performance
of Data Parallel Haskell....
* GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [50]Project midpoint.
* GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [51]The GNU Debugger and me.
* Don Stewart (dons): [52]Evolving faster Haskell programs. Using
genetic algorithms to find optimal flag combinations.
* Xmonad: [53]Xmonad and the Gimp.
* Xmonad: [54]xmonad on eee.
* Mark Wassell: [55]Conversations with a type checker.
* Holumbus: [56]Holumbus-MapReduce on Hackage. Some neat libraries
for building distributed systems!
* Darcs: [57]darcs weekly news #20.
* Nick Mudge: [58]First Bay Area Haskell Meeting.
* Dan Piponi (sigfpe): [59]Dinatural Transformations and Coends.
Quotes of the Week
* mmorrow: when i first saw haskell i was like "holy shitfork! that's
what i've been trying to do in C for forever!"
* pastah: the maybe monad is like cheating. everything is so
awesomelly easy.
* wli: Monads are like constipation. Comonads are like Ex-Lax.
* TomMD: Never trust IO.
* Axman6: let blah f x = f (blah f x) in blah ("blah "++) ""
* MyCatVerbs: Lazy IO is implemented in terms of unsafePerformIO,
you, you, you silly bipedal carbon-based organism.
* MyCatVerbs: Amdahl's law is mostly to be used for making people
feel depressed.
* Axman6: -ddump-occur-anal <- another terrible name...
* AchimSchneider: Finite automata don't go bottom in any case, at
least not if you don't happen to shoot them and their health drops
below zero.
* ski: the truth (semantics), the whole truth (completeness), and
nothing but the truth (soundness)
* f4hy: wait you can do a show on an infinite list?! (I am starting
to think haskell is not a programming language, it is evil
wizardry)
* Baughn: concat $ forM [(1,2), (4,5)] $ \(a,b) -> show (b,a+b)
About the Haskell Weekly News
New editions are posted to [60]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
[61]the Haskell Sequence and [62]Planet Haskell. [63]RSS is also
available, and headlines appear on [64]haskell.org.
To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
information on [65]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at cis
dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
[66]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .
References
1. http://haskell.org/
2. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2009/03/12/we-won-a-jolt-award/
3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16944
4. http://tommd.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/explicit-parallelism-via-thread-pools/
5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54758
6. http://www.darcs.net/donations.html
7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54652
8. http://www.vintage-basic.net/
9. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54521
10. http://raintown.org/threadscope
11. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54445
12. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/torch
13. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54436
14. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/sparsebit
15. http://kyagrd.dyndns.org/wiki/SparseBitmapsForPatternMatchCoverage
16. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-March/057305.html
17. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/happs%2Dtutorial
18. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/happstack
19. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54409
20. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/future
21. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54325
22. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Holumbus%2DMapReduce
23. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Holumbus-Distribution
24. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Holumbus-Storage
25. http://www.holumbus.org/redmine/wiki/holumbus
26. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16953
27. http://www.turbinado.org/
28. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16945
29. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/iteratee
30. http://okmij.org/ftp/Haskell/Iteratee/
31. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16942
32. http://uebb.cs.tu-berlin.de/harpy/
33. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/54418
34. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16944
35. http://planet.haskell.org/
36. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles
37. http://braincrater.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/pimp-your-xmonad-4-urgency-hooks/
38. http://tommd.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/explicit-parallelism-via-thread-pools/
39. http://blog.malde.org/index.php/2009/03/13/current-developments/
40. http://wadler.blogspot.com/2009/03/cafe-scientifique.html
41. http://yi-editor.blogspot.com/2009/03/yi-060-release-notes.html
42. http://www.alsonkemp.com/haskell/announce-turbinado-v06/
43. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/03/thread-activity-plotting.html
44. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2009/03/12/we-won-a-jolt-award/
45. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2009/03/13/real-world-haskell-on-the-kindle-2/
46. http://cpoucet.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/bootstrapping-cabal/
47. http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/archives/2009/03/10/mickinator-file-manager/
48. http://greenokapi.net/blog/2009/03/10/rough-grids-in-haskell/
49. http://justtesting.org/post/85103645
50. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/03/project-midpoint.html
51. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/03/gnu-debugger-and-me.html
52. http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/evolving-faster-haskell-programs/
53. http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/xmonad-and-the-gimp/
54. http://xmonad.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/xmonad-on-eee/
55. http://www.poundstone.org/blog/?p=23
56. http://holumbus.fh-wedel.de/blog/?p=18
57. http://blog.darcs.net/2009/03/darcs-weekly-news-20.html
58. http://nickmudge.info/?post=115
59. http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/03/dinatural-transformations-and-coends.html
60. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
61. http://sequence.complete.org/
62. http://planet.haskell.org/
63. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
64. http://haskell.org/
65. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
66. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/
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