[Haskell-cafe] Master's thesis topic sought

Luke Palmer lrpalmer at gmail.com
Thu Nov 5 01:00:51 EST 2009


On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Matus Tejiscak <ziman at centrum.sk> wrote:
> Hello, -Cafe,
>
> I'm looking for an interesting topic to hack on in my thesis.
>
> The thesis should be rather "theoretical"/abstract (writing a mail
> client in Haskell is not, for example), dealing with FP or related
> fields. I've had a few (blurry) ideas, ranging from investigating
> (possibilities for) Haskell extensions, to zygohistomorphic
> prepromorphisms, but nothing concrete, possibly because I'm not familiar
> with these areas enough to see what could be done -- which brings up a
> question whether it is a good idea to even try hacking on a topic like
> this.
>
> However, I'm eager to learn so if you have a topic you'd need somebody
> to work on, or just an interesting (or maybe even an uninteresting)
> idea, i'd be grateful for suggestions. :)

Yes!  I have been trying to experiment with lazy specializing virtual
machine, but I am starting a company so basically have no time for
such academic pursuits.

Here is a short brainstormy introduction I wrote about lazy
specialization to whet your appetite:
http://lukepalmer.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/emphasizing-specialization/

And an overnight hack proof of concept: http://github.com/luqui/vatican

But I think the area deserves *much* more research than it is
currently getting, and could end up being a influential piece of
functional programming.

There are a fair amount of topics in there -- the one I am most
interested in is simply the art of engineering for a lazy specializer.
 I.e. how does having a lazy specializing language affect the way we
write efficient purely functional programs?

If you are interested, I would be happy to guide you through what I
know so you can find something interesting and pick it up quickly.

Luke


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