[Haskell-cafe] [ANNOUNCE] Parallel Haskell project underway

[Neil Brown]

On 15/11/10 15:23, Dmitry Astapov wrote:
> == Dragonfly ==
>
> http://www.dragonfly.co.nz/
>
> Participants: Finlay Thompson, Edward Abraham
>
>     Cloudy Bayes: Hierarchical Bayesian modeling in Haskell
>
>     The Cloudy Bayes project aims to develop a fast Bayesian model
>     fitter that takes advantage of modern multiprocessor machines. It
>     will support model descriptions in the BUGS model description
>     language (WinBUGS, OpenBUGS, and JAGS). It will be implemented as
>     an embedded domain specific language (EDSL) within Haskell. A wide
>     range of model hierarchical Bayesian model structures will be
>     possible, including many of the models used in medical, ecological,
>     and biological sciences.
>

This is slightly OT, but having used WinBUGS a little, I am very pleased 
to see this listed as a project.  WinBUGS is a commendable piece of 
work, but is really showing its age these days.  Between its really 
horrible error messages if anything goes wrong, awkward 
scripting/job-running interface (slightly eased by R2WinBUGS), and of 
course lack of support for multicore, I think this is a case where 
parallel Haskell could provide a lot of benefits over the existing software.

Also, can you tell us which (if any) of these projects will be released 
as open-source?

Thanks,

Neil.