[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: November 08, 2006
Donald Bruce Stewart
dons at cse.unsw.edu.au
Tue Nov 7 23:45:23 EST 2006
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Haskell Weekly News
http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
Issue 48 - November 08, 2006
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Welcome to issue 48 of HWN, a weekly newsletter covering developments
in the Haskell community.
Announcements
* SmallCheck 0.2. Colin Runciman [1]announced that SmallCheck 0.2, a
lightweight testing library for Haskell, is out, and can be
[2]obtained. Since version 0.1: there's now a choice of
interactive or non-interactive test-drivers using iterative
deepening; more pre-defined test-data generators, including
revised Int, Integer, Float, Double, Nat and Natural and
additional examples. SmallCheck is similar to QuickCheck but
instead of testing for a sample of randomly generated values,
SmallCheck tests properties for all the finitely many values up to
some depth, progressively increasing the depth used.
1. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14461
2. http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/smallcheck0.2.tar
* Hoogle Command Line 3 Beta. Neil Mitchell [3]released Hoogle
Command Line version 3 Beta, an alternative to [4]the Hoogle
website. Hoogle lets you search for Haskell functions by name and
by type signature.
3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14464
4. http://haskell.org/hoogle
* The Monad.Reader. Wouter Swierstra [5]issued a call for
submissions for articles for the next issue of [6]The
Monad.Reader. There are a large number of conferences and journals
that accept research papers related to Haskell; unfortunately, the
platform for non-academic publications is far less developed. This
is where The Monad.Reader fits in. So if you are tossing around
some ideas, write it up, and submit! Deadline for submissions is
January 19th, 2007.
5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14449
6. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/TheMonadReader
* Haskell Communities and Activities Report. Andres Loeh [7]reminded
us that the deadline for the November 2006 edition of the Haskell
Communities and Activities Report is now! -- there may still be
just enough time to make sure that the report contains a section
on *your* project, on the interesting stuff that you've been
doing; using or affecting Haskell in some way. For more info see
[8]the call for contributions.
7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14453
8. http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2006-October/018646.html
* HsMan. Frederik Eaton [9]announced hsman, a tool that indexes
Haddock-generated HTML files, and allows users to search for
functions and also GHC manual topics.
9. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/11153/focus=11153
* HaL, Haskell meeting in Leipzig. Johannes Waldmann [10]announced
that a local Haskell meeting is to take place on December 5th in
Leipzig, Germany. The meeting will be hosted by IBA Consulting. It
will be quite informal, with some very short talks (most probably
in German). Interessenten sind herzlich eingeladen. [11]Details
and (free) registration.
10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/14454
11. http://iba-cg.de/haskell.html
Haskell'
This section covers the [12]Haskell' standardisation process.
* [13]Introduce lambda-match (explicit match failure and fall-through)
* [14]Importing and exporting instance declarations
* [15]Patches!
12. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime
13. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.prime/1847
14. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.prime/1835/focus=1835
15. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.prime/1850/focus=1850
Libraries
This week's proposals and extensions to the [16]standard libraries.
* [17]unsafeShift operations for Data.Bits
* [18]map* for Data.List
* [19](*) `on` f = \x y -> f x * f y
* [20]forkChild, waitForChild, parIO, timeout
* [21]isLeft and isRight
16. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions
17. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/5569/focus=5569
18. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/5552/focus=5552
19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/5519/focus=5519
20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/5488/focus=5488
21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/5461/focus=5461
Discussion
* The OI comonad. Sven Biedermann [22]invoked a discussion about the
OI [23]comonad, and provided an example of a simple OI-comonad for
stdin/stdout only, that preserves referential integrity.
22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/16278/focus=16278
23. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Research_papers/Monads_and_arrows#Comonads
* The Bits between the Lambdas. Nuno Pinto [24]asked about Binary IO
in Haskell. Several solutions were suggested.
24. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/16245/focus=16245
* Translating Haskell to VHDL. Alfonso Acosta [25]pondered how to
write a translator from [26]Haskell to VHDL.
25. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/16337/focus=16337
26. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Research_papers/Domain_specific_languages#Hardware_design
* New maintainers for wxHaskell. Jeremy O'Donoghue [27]announced
that a new team of maintainers in place for wxHaskell, so we're
hoping that will see a significant increase in wxHaskell activtiy
in the future. Great!
27. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/16364/focus=16364
* Permutation with k levels. Nuno Pinto [28]wondered about generic
permute algorithms in Haskell.
28. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/16365/focus=16365
Blog noise
[29]Haskell news from the blogosphere.
* [30]Introductory Haskell: Solving the Sorting-It-Out Kata
* [31]Writing A Lisp Interpreter In Haskell
* [32]Standardising Concurrency in C++
* [33]Living with a ghost: concurrency and state
* [34]Concatenative programming in Haskell's Arrows
* [35]Functional programming is functional
* [36]LaTeX YAHT on darcs.haskell.org
* [37]My next programming language
* [38]Haskell Bowling
* [39]Variable substitution gives a ... monad
* [40]Modeling the Semantics of Geographic Categories through
Conceptual Integration (in Haskell)
* [41]Keeping it simple
* [42]In the beginning...
* [43]Testing ... testing ...
* [44]Livecoding music with Haskell
* [45]Why I recommend Haskell
* [46]Win for Type Theory?
* [47]That problem when the ideas come too thick and fast
29. http://planet.haskell.org/
30. http://blog.moertel.com/articles/2006/10/31/introductory-haskell-solving-the-sorting-it-out-kata
31. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp-in-haskell.html
32. http://www.artima.com/cppsource/threads_meeting.html
33. http://damienkatz.net/2006/10/living_with_a_g_1.html
34. http://kpreid.livejournal.com/7351.html
35. http://gearon.blogspot.com/2006/10/functional-programming-is-functional.html
36. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2006/11/yaht-on-darcshaskellorg.html
37. http://khigia.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/what-is-my-next-programming-language/
38. http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/dbcHaskellBowling.htm
39. http://sigfpe.blogspot.com/2006/11/variable-substitution-gives.html
40. http://virginia-gis.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!45E7F65393A53E20!117.entry
41. http://vastusutra.blogspot.com/2006/10/keeping-it-simple.html
42. http://samplerate.blogspot.com/2006/11/in-beginning.html
43. http://chiralos.blogspot.com/2006/11/testing-testing.html
44. http://doc.gold.ac.uk/~ma503am/alex/haskellmusic
45. http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1807#comment-22019
46. http://nolacoaster.livejournal.com/20789.html
47. http://brokenhut.livejournal.com/176006.html
Quotes of the Week
* coffeemug: There don't seem to be any definitive sources that
suggest Haskell isn't good at something.
* stevan: Haskell is like all the other functional languages I have
read about, but totally different at the same time
* coffeemug: you can do more with Haskell in less code that's easier
to read and maintain in the long run
* Jeannette Wing: Computational thinking will have become ingrained
in everyone's lives when ... trees are drawn upside down
* monochrom: recursive directory search is an alpha-beta with boring
values of alpha and beta
* skew: Types are largely about writing down the contract of a
function once and telling the compiler to keep track of things,
rather than trying to get it all straight yourself, and being
rewarded with bugs that only manifest during demos...
* monochrom: They say Mozarts Mass in C minor K427 is uplifting. I'm
going to name my next monad transformer or arrow transformer
MozartMassInCMinorK427T
* Ron Jeffries: Dan's assertion, as I recall it, was that Haskell
lets us express the program 'in the way we think'. On the
contrary, what Haskell does in my opinion is let us express the
program in the way Haskell thinks
* sedd: [On the improving Haskell and Lua scores on the language
shootout] This is awesome. It's like watching a match between the
team of the town where you're from, and the team of the town where
you live. Either way you've got a reason to get drunk after the
game.
* emeijer: Functional programming has finally arrived to the masses.
It's name is not Lisp, ML or Haskell: it's Visual Basic
* audreyt: Because Haskell is such a reasonable language, we reason
about it all the time, and we also have a bot to reason it for us
when we are lazy
* spiffy: needs to stop trying to understand monads at night
* psykotic: spiffy: they're just monoids on the category of
endofunctors over some category, what's the big deal?
* skew: also, if you use ST you know the code is just using mutable
variables, rather than formatting your hard drive
* Baughn: I once explained monads to a non-programmer: 'And? What's
so hard about that?'
* monochrom: The problem is that bad programmers will assess
tutorials for good programmers as 'ivory tower', and moreover bad
programmers are the vocal majority. It gets you bad press
* scodil: you say 'sledgehammer' like its a bad thing
* sjanssen: I suspect that planet.haskell.org has more content on
catamorphisms than cats
Code Watch
* Wed Nov 1 08:43:29 PST 2006. Simon Peyton Jones. Major overhaul of
the Simplifier. This big patch completely overhauls the
Simplifier. The simplifier had grown old and crufty, and was hard
to understand and maintain. This new version is still quite
complicated, because the simplifier does a lot, but it's much
easier to understand, for me at least.
About the Haskell Weekly News
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[54]contributing information. Send stories to dons at cse.unsw.edu.au.
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