Top picks:
- Aditya Siram announces the first release of Haskell bindings to the C++-based FLTK cross-platform GUI library. FLTK can be used to build a modern windows-and-widgets-based desktop app and comes with a UI builder called FLUID.
- The startup called Helium releases a "homegrown Webmachine-inspired web framework in Haskell." Airship is very small (just under 1000 LoC) and extremely unopinionated: it works with any WAI-compatible web server and any templating language (including none at all!). Reddit discussion.
- Adam Chlipala releases a new Ur/Web library for producing custom event-planning web apps quickly. All you need to do is "assemble highly parametrized components."
- Abe Voelker finds himself wanting algebraic data types and pattern matching when writing Ruby. He presents an evolution of a file upload validator, culminating in a finale that uses an Either monad provided by a Ruby gem called Kleisli.
- Eitan Chatav shares a correct-by-construction JSON serializer/deserializer using lens-json.
- Wouldn't it be neat to get profiling info without stopping the program and pissing off your users? Mark Wotton has filed exactly such a feature request.
- Is Call Arity optimization to blame for your 7.10 compilation slowdowns? Joachim Breitner investigates.
- Ever felt Haskell on Windows is 2nd class, even though it's Tier-1 according to the Platform? Well, installing hmatrix on Win requires additional steps, as Redditor wrvn kindly explains.
- Do you program in Haskell using emacs? You must be using haskell-mode then. Here's monthly news straight from the haskell-mode development team.
- Dominic Steinitz raises awareness about the brokenness of System.Random. Solution? Use tf-random for now.
- Big number exponentiation segfaults, in this reddit discussion. Turns out it's a bug involving the GNU Multi-precision Library. Make sure you have the latest GMP version 6.
- Devan Stormont creates his first hackage library that obtains weather forecast data via a web-based API. He writes, "The really brilliant part is in being able to completely replace a core piece of an app within a single day and having complete confidence in the result. It’s moments like this that make you really happy to be working with such a powerful language as Haskell."
- Carl reminds us that GADT can always be pattern-matched in a case expression. "It's let expressions that cause GHC to provide amusing messages about its brain exploding."
- Zohaib Rauf publishes a monad tutorial. He explains that the 'M' in 'M a' is "some metadata wrapped around 'a'."
Tweets of the week:
- John Carmack: If I had to write software that my life depended on, I would seriously consider using Haskell.
- shanelogsdon: tried the #haskell web framework http://www.spock.li/ last night with a meaningless micro benchmark. ~38k req/s is pretty quick
- AlexanderKatt: 'it is entirely unnecessary to understand category theory in order to understand monads in #haskell' said the guys who know category theory
- justusadam_: I'm warming up to the idea of using #Haskell more. Wonderful language but the syntax and some of the concepts were difficult to understand
- least_nathan: Algebraic Data Types Considered Harmful: once you use them, every language lacking them drives you to madness. #LangSec
- chwthewke: #Haskell is a very hot programming language :) No, really, an hour of it and my laptop is on the verge of becoming a brown dwarf :D
- robinbateboerop: Troll tries to get banned from #Haskell IRC channel, decides to learn Haskell instead.
- stephan_gfx: Cool, cabal will multithread installation/build if you run it with the -j option. cabal install -j <package_name>
- Pythux: One thing I learned at Haskell's meetup yesterday: it's possible to create a start-up with Haskell full stack! #Haskell #Awesome
Quote of the week:- Lisp, Haskell and other FP are
currently killing it in the quiet world of DSLs, especially Mining, Oil
& Gas industries which need to parse petaflops of seismic data and
reservoir simulations, need rapid prototyping, need formally verified
drilling platform components that field engineers can interact with
easily, and HPC algorithms for financial trading. -- Source
-- Kim-Ee