[Haskell] Haskell Weekly News

[Kim-Ee Yeoh]

*Top Picks:*

   - Team GHC announces the first release candidate of version 8.0
   <http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/ANNOUNCE-Glasgow-Haskell-Compiler-8-0-1-release-candidate-1-td5827003.html>.
   New features include:
   - Strict and StrictData extensions
      - TypeFamilyDependencies extension for injective type families
      <https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/InjectiveTypeFamilies>
      - TypeInType extension for more dependent typing hackery
      - explicit type application in plain Haskell, not Core
      - Applicative do-notation
      - a spanking new pattern-match checker
      - modularization of the ghci interpreter: it can now run as an
      independent process

Note that the announcement includes a list of bugs linked to the new
features.

   - The engineers at an Australian real estate listings website explain
   how they "used Category Theory to solve a problem in Java."
   <http://techblog.realestate.com.au/how-we-used-category-theory-to-solve-a-problem-in-java/>
   They face the problem of their search API having grown gnarly and
   inextensible. First they offer a monoid tutorial culminating in
   SearchResults -> SearchResults endomorphisms. Then they regularize their
   database lookups as Kleisli-composable instances of a monomorphic state
   monad of type (DataSource, SearchResults) -> SearchResults. Finally, they
   profunctorize the state monad for mereological development of the
   DataSource. So how was the blog post received? A vocal section of the HN
   community express skepticism
   <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10892696>. One haskell subredditor
   found it "an excellent article."


   <https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/40s85b/how_we_used_category_theory_to_solve_a_problem_in/cywztmh>
   - Verity Stob <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verity_Stob>, the doyen of
   information technology satire, skewers the cargo culting of Functional
   Programming
   <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/13/stob_remember_the_monoids/> and
   by the by writes a monad tutorial (omg!). Haskell redditors chuckle and
   cluck at the hatchet job
   <https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/40wqzf/learn_you_func_prog_on_five_minute_quick_el_regs/>
   .

   - Team Wander Nauta creates Viskell
   <https://github.com/wandernauta/viskell>, "an experimental visual
   programming environment for a typed (Haskell-like) functional programming
   language." Programming with touch tablets in mind, he implements Viskell in
   Java 8 because "Haskell lacks suitable GUI libraries, and we need good
   multi-touch support." A slides PDF contains more screenshots.
   <https://github.com/wandernauta/viskell/blob/master/viskell-nlfpday.pdf>
   Well-received on both Hacker News
   <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874294> and /r/haskell
   <https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/406au9/viskell_visual_programming_meets_haskell_visual/>
   .


*Quotes of the Week:*

   - Tom Ellis: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10870488#up_10874714>
   In Haskell you don't fight the type system. It fights your bugs.

   - Jeremy Bowers:
   <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10892293#up_10896419> The reason I
   find Haskell interesting is precisely that it's the only place I know where
   the theoretically-minded and the practically-minded get together and
   interpollinate. Everywhere else the one group pretty much just sneers at
   the other.

   - Redditor lukewarm:
   <https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/40aa4n/how_to_make_industry_quality_software_with_haskell/cysqbvr>
   Yes, you can write industry quality software in Haskell. Do all your
   computations in the IO monad, keep intermediate results in MVars. Use only
   Int and String types. Use exceptions to handle errors. Write yourself
   custom constructs to emulate for and while loops, preferably using
   Template Haskell.


-- Kim-Ee
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