*Top Picks:* - Oskar Wickström rewrites the Oden-to-Go transpiler from Racket to Haskell http://oden-lang.org/blog/compiler/2016/01/18/the-haskell-rewrite.html. Oden is an FP language comprising an ML type system and LISP syntax. Oskar explains that he made the migration because of several advantages that Haskell offered over Racket: exhaustive pattern-match checking, type-guided refactoring, monad transformers, and faster execution times. Apropos, the convo over at lobste.rs https://lobste.rs/s/8hidko/the_haskell_rewrite_the_motivation_for_moving_awa... links to this claim by Gabriel Gonzalez: "Haskell is an amazing language for writing your own compiler. If you are writing a compiler in another language you should genuinely consider switching." - Reviewing 2015 work month-by-month, Gracjan Polak tells the story of how he decided to lead the development of Haskell Mode https://github.com/haskell/haskell-mode/wiki/Haskell-Mode-2015-retrospective, "a bunch of Emacs major and minor modes put together in a single package." Discussion over at /r/haskell https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/425gn4/haskell_mode_2015_retrospec... . - Jared Tobin presents monadic versions of five recursion-schemas http://jtobin.ca/monadic-recursion-schemes/, namely: cata-, ana-, para-, apo-, and hylomorphisms. *Quotes of the Week:* - Tim Kellogg: https://lobste.rs/s/erxkun/redundancy_vs_dependencies_which_is_worse/comment... I’ve known a few old programmers nearing retirement that have a long list of very impressive accomplishments. The older and more accomplished they get, the more they prefer redundancy over dependency. The oldest and most accomplished will write their own load balancers, TCP stacks, loggers, everything if need be. Are they on to something? - From HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10972051#up_10979314 If you have the time, I'd advise you to learn Haskell, in order to stretch your mind and become an excellent OCaml developer, the way learning Latin makes you a better French or Italian writer. - HN markov chain parody site headline: http://news.ycombniator.com/comments/comments_419.html $690 for an hour minimum wage for state management in haskell *Recorded Talk of the Week:* - On Dec 17 last year http://www.meetup.com/haskellhackersathackerdojo/events/226870399/, Andrew Gibiansky demoed IHaskell, a Mathematica-like "capable graphical alternative" to the ghci REPL at the NorCal Hacker Dojo. Thanks go to Joe "begriffs" Nelson who recorded the talk and summarized it into bullet points http://begriffs.com/posts/2016-01-20-ihaskell-notebook.html. Joe's page was well-received at both Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10942969 and Haskell Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/41xnhw/demo_of_ihaskell_notebook_v... . p.s. There will be no News next week. HWN will resume the week after. -- Kim-Ee