[Haskell] Request for Nominations to the GHC Steering Committee

[Chris Dornan]

Hi Joachim,

I would like to nominate myself for a spot on the GHC Steering Committee if the committee thinks it is appropriate. I have been writing Haskell programs for pretty much as long as Haskell has been around. (I started with Miranda in 1987 and tracked the Haskell reports as they became available.)

I think I have pretty good credentials in terms of conservative tendencies where Haskell is concerned being an early skeptic of type classes. (Early type classes appeared too weak to me given the complexity they were bringing but have been delighted to be proved comprehensively wrong.) I think my favourite language proposal is DerivingVia — it brings so much of what is good in Haskell together in an utterly delightful way. (Though being a past member of the ARM patent review committee I never saw anything approaching 1% of the invention in this proposal — IMHO, Turing Award have been dished out for less.)  Long story short, I like a good proposal, but it really needs to pay its way.

I am a strong believer in the GHC proposals process and tying them to language extension pragmas — it has really born tremendous fruits that could hardly have come both under the old monolithic language report regime. 

I do not have a strong background in type theory — I have however dabbled in the past, writing simple HM solvers, etc., and have a grasp of the fundamentals — so my main utility will be reviewing proposals from the perspective of a non-type theorist. You might have enough of those in which case you will be looking elsewhere!

Cheers,

Chris


> On 2022-01-29, at 11:36, Joachim Breitner <mail at joachim-breitner.de> wrote:
> 
> Dear Haskell community,
> 
> the GHC Steering committee is seeking nominations for at least two new
> members.
> 
> The committee scrutinizes, nitpicks, improves, weights and eventually
> accepts or rejects proposals that extend or change the language
> supported by GHC and other (public-facing) aspects of GHC.
> Our processes are described at
>   https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals
> which is also the GitHub repository where proposals are proposed. In
> particular, please have a look at the bylaws at
>   https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/committee.rst
> 
> 
> We are looking for a member who has the ability 
> * to understand such language extension proposals,
> * to find holes and missing corner cases in the specifications,
> * foresee the interaction with other language features and 
>   specifications,
> * comment constructively and improve the proposals,
> * judge the cost/benefit ratio and
> * finally come to a justifiable conclusion.
> 
> We look for committee members who have some of these properties:
> * have substantial experience in writing Haskell applications or
>   libraries, which they can use to inform judgements about the
>   utility or otherwise of proposed features,
> * have made active contributions to the Haskell community, for
>   some time,
> * have expertise in language design and implementation, in either
>   Haskell or related languages, which they can share with us.
> 
> The committee’s work requires a small, but non-trivial amount of time,
> especially when you are assigned a proposal for shepherding. We
> estimate the workload to be around 2 hours per week, and our process
> works best if members usually respond to technical emails within 1-2
> weeks (within days is even better). Please keep that in mind if your
> email inbox is already overflowing.
> 
> There is no shortage of people who are eager to get fancy new
> features into the language, both in the committee and the wider
> community. But each new feature imposes a cost, to implement, to learn,
> (particularly) through its unexpected interaction with other features.
> We need to strike a balance, one that encourages innovation (as GHC
> always has) while still making Haskell attractive for real-world
> production use and for teaching. We therefore explicitly invite
> “conservative” members of the community to join the committee.
> 
> To make a nomination, please send an email to me (as the committee
> secretary) at mail at joachim-breitner.de until February 11th. I will
> distribute the nominations among the committee, and we will keep the
> nominations and our deliberations private.
> 
> We explicitly encourage self-nominations. You can nominate others, but
> please obtain their explicit consent to do so. (We don’t want to choose
> someone who turns out to be unable to serve.)
> 
> On behalf of the committee,
> Joachim Breitner
> 
> -- 
> Joachim Breitner
>  mail at joachim-breitner.de
>  http://www.joachim-breitner.de/
> 
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