Welcome to issue 254 of the HWN, an issue covering crowd-sourced bits

of information about Haskell from around the web. This issue covers the

week of December 02, 2012 to January 05, 2013.

As some of you might have noticed, there has been an interruption in

the scheduled transmission of the newsletter. I have, over the past few

weeks, completed a move to NYC! It has been wonderful to meet many in

the community at the Haskell NYC meetups. Here is to a great year for

our cherised community.

Let's get things started out the right way, with a litte "Lambda

Style" :-)

[1] http://goo.gl/nQYdp

Quotes of the Week

* GuySteele: Some people prefer not to commingle the functional,

lambda-calculus part of a language with the parts that do side

effects. It seems they believe in the separation of Church and

state.

* edwardk: type level ieee floats are a crime against nature. i had

to implement them in c++ for template meta programming once. never

ever again

* acowley: (regarding Proxy) Haven't you ever wanted to put something

in a box and never think about it?

elliott: children

* merijn: xenocons: I spend the entire week grading FP homework, I

think it's impossible for you to surprise me :p

merijn: That's confusing :<

* andr00: Today's software engineering word is "farpotshket." This is

a Yiddish word meaning, "broken, because someone tried to fix it."

* dmwit: I know, I know. "0, 1, many". But then I also write most of

my programs in a language whose type system has 4 levels. Four! Is

that even a number??

* aristid: a dubious motivation IMHO

edwardk: i've had worse =P

* ziarkaen: I'm thinking I can kill two birds with one stone by

learning Haskell while producing a website, but all the birds are

still alive at the moment.

* ion:

monad.bind = function (func, args) {

return func.apply(undefined, [value].concat(Array.prototype.slice.apply(args || [])));

};

is idiomatic JavaScript?

* beaky: if stacks are recursion, what are queues?

Hafydd: Procrastination.

* elliott: I think lens is the first library I've seen that promises

letting you write abstract totally-inefficient-looking

compositional code and getting reliably good compilation which has

actually delivered on that promise.

* elliott: I didn't say half the things I said.

* shachaf: The two-letter and three-letter identifiers are for

edwardk's libraries. The one-letter identifiers are for his actual

code.

elliott: edwardk has non-library code?

* neutrino: in many ways, Haskell is like this primodial soup out of

which other languages end up springing

* mm_freak: bruce schneier is an endofunctor that turns all

automorphisms into identities

* roconnor: where are all the category theoriest? why don't they

already have all the answers for us?

edwardk: roconnor: this is the point in your career where you look

around for the cavalry and realize that you're it ;)

* cmccann: multi-letter type variables is an experimental new

extension

* elliott: I can't remember the last time I wrote any Haskell without

an evil grin.

* neutrino: when you're told you have to use javascript, the viable

alternative always remains in seppuku. and it's much more

honorable.

* shachaf: chrisdone: Please make Author not mandatory. [on hpaste]

donri: shachaf: just write "not shachaf" and no one will ever know

it's you

* tac: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the

precipitate

* cmccann: some people blame themselves, some people blame the

language, but the people who really know what they're doing blame

shachaf.