[Haskell-cafe] Annoyed at System.Random

[Thomas DuBuisson]

Ryan,
I've grown annoyed at System.Random enough (specifically, StdGen).
How much, if any, pushback would there be if I put together a FFI
binding to a C AES-CTR based RNG.  There are many advantages:

0) The API wouldn't have to change (though some parts should, and some
change is already planned)
1) It can be fast (maybe not MT fast, but really quite good)
2) It's secure and the splitting properties can be related to
cryptographic problems.
3) It could use Intel NI instructions when available.
4) It's NIST standardized, so there exist known answer tests.
5) We could expose a method to fill an arbitrary buffer :: Storable a
=> Ptr a -> Int -> IO ()
6) The rest of the community doesn't have to do any of the work.

I'd be tempted to pull in the 'entropy' package for seeding, but will
make that a separate proposal.

Cheers,
Thomas