[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News: Issue 76 - July 9, 2008

Brent Yorgey byorgey at seas.upenn.edu
Wed Jul 9 14:41:54 EDT 2008


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haskell Weekly News
http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20080709
Issue 76 - July 09, 2008
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Welcome to issue 76 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the
   [1]Haskell community.

   The [2]ICFP Programming Contest is this weekend! Go forth and kick some
   butt, Haskell-style. A big thank you in advance to all those at PSU and
   U Chicago who are working hard to write and run the contest.

Community News

   Luke Palmer (luqui) is [3]having a great time in Antwerp.

   John Goerzen's son is [4]so cute, it should be illegal.

Announcements

   Haskell-cafe on lively.com. Edward Kmett has created a [5]Haskell Cafe
   room on Google's new virtual-world platform [6]Lively (which is
   unfortunately windows-only at the moment).

   Uniplate 1.2. Neil Mitchell [7]announced the release of [8]Uniplate
   1.2, a library for reducing boilerplate code by performing generic
   traversals. Version 1.2 features some bug fixes, a compatibility layer
   with Compos and SYB, and a 25-50% performance increase over Uniplate
   1.0.

   GHC 6.8.2 stable in Gentoo. Luis Araujo [9]announced that GHC 6.8.2,
   and its accompanying libraries, have now been marked as stable in the
   official Gentoo portage tree.

   The Monad.Reader (11) - Call for Copy. Wouter Swierstra [10]announced a
   call for copy for Issue 11 of [11]the Monad.Reader. The submission
   deadline is August 1, although you should let Wouter know as soon as
   possible if you plan to submit something.

   hCsound. John Lato [12]announced the initial public release of
   [13]hCsound, a Haskell binding to the Csound audio processing language
   API.

   Portland and OSCon. John Goerzen [14]inquired whether any Haskellers in
   Portland would be interested in getting together during OSCon July 23
   or 24.

   Faster graph SCCs. Iavor Diatchki [15]announced that he has implemented
   Tarjan's algorithm for computing the strongly connected components of a
   graph, which is considerably faster than the containers package for
   larger graphs. Iavor's implementation is available in the [16]GraphSCC
   package.

   parallel map/reduce. jinjing [17]exhibited some code for doing parallel
   map/reduce computations.

   Disciplined Disciple Compiler. Ben Lippmeier [18]announced version 1.1
   of the [19]Disciplined Disciple Compiler (DDC), an explicitly lazy
   dialect of Haskell, with support for first class destructive update of
   arbitrary data, computational effects without the need for state
   monads, and type directed field projections. Version 1.1 includes a
   number of new features and more example code.

   darcs 2.0.2. David Roundy [20]announced the release of [21]darcs 2.0.1
   and 2.0.2. These releases fix quite a few bugs, and users of darcs 2
   are strongly recommended to upgrade.

Google Summer of Code

   Progress updates from participants in the 2008 [22]Google Summer of
   Code.

   GHC plugins. Max Bolingbroke is working on dynamically loaded plugins
   for GHC. Over the [23]past two weeks, he has implemented type safe
   dynamic loading, an annotations system, and some sample plugins.

   Hoogle 4. Neil Mitchell (ndm) is working on [24]Hoogle 4. [25]This
   week, he has been working on type searching, using a much more
   efficient algorithm than type search in previous versions of Hoogle.
   Next week, he plans to finish off type search and work on the build
   system.

   DPH physics engine. Roman Cheplyaka (Feuerbach) is working on a
   [26]physics engine using [27]Data Parallel Haskell. He spent most of
   [28]this week fixing bugs and improving existing simulation code. And
   he now has something to [29]show for it!

   Language.C. Benedikt Huber (visq) is [30]working on Language.C, a
   standalone parser/pretty printer library for C99. [31]This week, he
   created a semantic representation for declarations and types, and a way
   to convert between an AST representation and a semantic representation.

   Cabal dependency framework. Andrea Vezzosi (Saizan) is working on a
   [32]make-like dependency analysis framework for Cabal.

   Generic tries. Jamie Brandon is working on a library for efficient maps
   using generalized tries.

   GHC API. Thomas Schilling (nominolo) is working on [33]improvements to
   the GHC API.

Libraries

   Proposals and extensions to the [34]standard libraries.

   Extensible exceptions. Ian Lynagh sent out a [35]proposal to replace
   the current exception mechanism in the base library with extensible
   exceptions, a la Simon Marlow's [36]extensible extensions paper.
   Deadline for discussion is 25th July.

Discussion

   Qualified import syntax badly designed (?). Neil Mitchell began a
   [37]discussion about Haskell syntax for qualified module imports (and
   module imports in general).

   Trouble with zip12. Michael Feathers is [38]having trouble with the
   zip12 function and some weird SQL-related errors...

   Santana on my evil ways. John D. Ramsdell [39]set off a spate of
   Haskell song and poetry.

   Alternatives to convoluted record syntax. Dougal Stanton [40]asked
   about alternatives to convoluted record update syntax, eliciting a
   number of interesting responses.

Jobs

   Lectureship in Functional Programming, Nottingham. Graham Hutton
   [41]announced an opening for a Lecturer in the Functional Programming
   Lab in Nottingham, a recently formed research group that comprises
   Thorsten Altenkirch, Graham Hutton, Henrik Nilsson, four research
   fellows, and eleven PhD students. Applications from the Haskell
   community are encouraged! The closing date for applications is Friday
   15th August 2008.

Blog noise

   [42]Haskell news from the [43]blogosphere.
     * Edward Kmett: [44]A Lively Haskell Cafe. A Haskell Cafe room on
       lively.com!
     * Sterling Clover: [45]Comonads in everyday life. A neat post on
       using a zipper comonad to render a website menu hierarchy without
       lots of duplicated effort.
     * Chung-chieh Shan: [46]Differentiating regions.
     * Real-World Haskell: [47]Real World Haskell, The Book, Available for
       Pre-Order.
     * Benedikt Huber: [48]An analysis-friendly representation. An update
       on Benedikt's Google Summer of Code project, Language.C.
     * Chris Okasaki: [49]Breadth-First Numbering: An Algorithm in
       Pictures. Algorithms without words!
     * >>> Jeremy Frens: [50]PE Problem #2 in All Languages (Part I).
       Jeremy explores solutions to Project Euler problem #2 in a variety
       of languages.
     * Roman Cheplyaka: [51]Double buffering & demo. A demo of Roman's
Google Summer of Code physics simulator!
     * Roman Cheplyaka: [52]QuickCheck puzzle: the answer. Why Roman's
       QuickCheck test involving nonzero vectors didn't terminate. Sneaky.
     * Roman Cheplyaka: [53]Status report: week 6. A status report on
       Roman's Google Summer of Code project.
     * >>> JP Moresmau: [54]Handling errors in JSON to Haskell
       deserialization. JP adds error handling with an Either monad to his
       JSON deserialization code.
     * Braden Shepherdson: [55]Fixed Point Datatypes. Braden explains the
       concept of recursive data types as fixed points of functors.
     * Luis Araujo: [56]GHC 6.8.2 stable! (Himerge 0.21.9 too!).
     * Matthew Sackman: [57]Anglo Haskell 2008.
     * Neil Mitchell: [58]GSoC Hoogle: Week 6.
     * >>> James Hague: [59]Functional Programming Went Mainstream Years
       Ago.
     * Max Bolingbroke: [60]Compiler Plugins For GHC: Weeks Three and
       Four. An update on Max's Google Summer of Code project.
     * >>> David Overton: [61]A Haskell Sudoku Solver using Finite Domain
       Constraints. David shows how to use his Haskell constraint solver
       to solve Sudoku puzzles. Pretty neat!
     * >>> Lorenz Pretterhofer: [62]Haskell Does Concurrency.
     * Edward Kmett: [63]Anamorphism. The newest installment in Edward's
       [64]field guide to recursion schemes.
     * John Goerzen (Real World Haskell): [65]Last Call for Comments on
       Most Chapters. Real World Haskell is going to press soon! Get your
       final comments in ASAP!
     * Edward Kmett: [66]MSFP 2008.
     * Lennart Augustsson: [67]Lost and Found. A very slick Haskell
       library for tracing how expressions are actually evaluated,
       including the ability to explicitly see the sharing involved!
     * Tom Nielsen (FP Lunch): [68]braincurry. A domain specific language
       to define and execute experiments and simulations related to
       cellular neuroscience.
     * Alex McLean: [69]Visualisation of a triangular mesh.
     * Paul R Brown: [70]Beust Sequence Ruminations. Thoughts on solving
       an interesting puzzle in Haskell.
     * >>> David Overton: [71]Constraint Programming in Haskell. David is
       working on a constraint logic programming system in Haskell.
     * >>> chaource: [72]Why functional programming is almost dead (and
       has always been). Interesting argument? Flawed premises? Both? None
       of the above? You decide!

Quotes of the Week

     * jfredett: I'd code but I'm so drugged up I could only write
       effective code in perl.
     * SamB: [SamB] @let forkbomb n = forkbomb (2*n) `par` forkbomb
       (2*n+1) [lambdabot] Defined. [SamB] > forkbomb 1 -!- lambdabot
       [n=lambdabo at 72.249.126.23] has quit [Remote closed the connection]
     * vinicius: haskell is macgyver with bananas, barbed wired and
       envelopes
     * dons: huh, amazon recommends Neal Stephenson + RWH
     * Pseudonym: trapped in the IO monad: The lesser known R. Kelly opera
     * byorgey: Extreme Anger Programming: you are paired with a really
       dumb partner and after twenty minutes of agony you rip the keyboard
       from their hands, delete everything they typed, and do it yourself

About the Haskell Weekly News

   New editions are posted to [73]the Haskell mailing list as well as to
   [74]the Haskell Sequence and [75]Planet Haskell. [76]RSS is also
   available, and headlines appear on [77]haskell.org. Headlines are
   available as [78]PDF.

   To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the
   information on [79]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at seas
   dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get
   [80]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ .

References

   1. http://haskell.org/
   2. http://www.icfpcontest.org/
   3. http://luqui.org/blog/archives/2008/07/05/fun-with-flemish/
   4. http://changelog.complete.org/posts/728-guid.html
   5. http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-4485567674160322075
   6. http://www.lively.com/
   7. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16292
   8. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/uniplate
   9. http://araujoluis.blogspot.com/2008/07/ghc-682-stable-himerge-0219-too.html
  10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16290
  11. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_Monad.Reader
  12. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16288
  13. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/hCsound
  14. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/42047
  15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/9470
  16. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/GraphSCC
  17. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41944
  18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41941
  19. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/DDC
  20. http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2008-June/012480.html
  21. http://darcs.net/
  22. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/wiki/SoC2008
  23. http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/2008/07/05/compiler-plugins-for-ghc-weeks-three-and-four/
  24. http://code.haskell.org/hoogle/
  25. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/07/gsoc-hoogle-week-6.html
  26. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hpysics
  27. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Data_Parallel_Haskell
  28. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/status-report-week-6.html
  29. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/double-buffering-demo.html
  30. http://www.sivity.net/projects/language.c/wiki/
  31. http://hsbene.blogspot.com/2008/07/analysis-friendly-representation.html
  32. http://code.haskell.org/~Saizan/cabal
  33. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GhcApiStatus
  34. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions
  35. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/9481
  36. http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/papers/ext-exceptions.pdf
  37. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/42080
  38. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2008-July/044956.html
  39. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41975
  40. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/41936
  41. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16285
  42. http://planet.haskell.org/
  43. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles
  44. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/haskell-cafe/
  45. http://fmapfixreturn.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/comonads-in-everyday-life/
  46. http://conway.rutgers.edu/~ccshan/wiki/blog/posts/Differentiation/
  47. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/07/08/real-world-haskell-the-book-available-for-pre-order/
  48. http://hsbene.blogspot.com/2008/07/analysis-friendly-representation.html
  49. http://okasaki.blogspot.com/2008/07/breadth-first-numbering-algorithm-in.html
  50. http://jdfrens.blogspot.com/2008/07/pe-problem-2-in-all-languages-part-i.html
  51. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/double-buffering-demo.html
  52. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/quickcheck-puzzle-answer.html
  53. http://physics-dph.blogspot.com/2008/07/status-report-week-6.html
  54. http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/2008/07/handling-errors-in-json-to-haskell.html
  55. http://braincrater.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/fixed-point-datatypes/
  56. http://araujoluis.blogspot.com/2008/07/ghc-682-stable-himerge-0219-too.html
  57. http://www.wellquite.org/anglo_haskell_2008.html
  58. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2008/07/gsoc-hoogle-week-6.html
  59. http://prog21.dadgum.com/31.html
  60. http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/2008/07/05/compiler-plugins-for-ghc-weeks-three-and-four/
  61. http://overtond.blogspot.com/2008/07/haskell-sudoku-solver-using-finite.html
  62. http://krysole.net/2008/07/04/haskell-does-concurrency/
  63. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/anamorphism/
  64. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/recursion-schemes/
  65. http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/2008/07/03/last-call-for-comments-on-most-chapters/
  66. http://comonad.com/reader/2008/msfp/
  67. http://augustss.blogspot.com/2008/07/lost-and-found-if-i-write-108-in.html
  68. http://sneezy.cs.nott.ac.uk/fplunch/weblog/?p=105
  69. http://doc.gold.ac.uk/~ma503am/alex/visualisation-of-a-mesh/
  70. http://mult.ifario.us/p/beust-sequence-ruminations
  71. http://overtond.blogspot.com/2008/07/pre.html
  72. http://chaource.livejournal.com/34530.html
  73. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
  74. http://sequence.complete.org/
  75. http://planet.haskell.org/
  76. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
  77. http://haskell.org/
  78. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/archives/20080709.pdf
  79. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN
  80. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/


More information about the Haskell mailing list