Re: [Haskell-cafe] Haskellers.com skills list moderation?

My $.02 follows:
From: Michael Snoyman
There's only two skills which I think absolutely must go:
Other languages I know: C# .NET, XSLT, Microsoft SQL Server, XML, SQL, CSS, C, C++, Java, HTML, Visual Basic Script, Pascal, Rexx, Basic and assembler tool building
Agreed that both should go.
There are 11 skills I'm leaning towards dropping, all because they fall in the too vague/too general category. Your input is requested on these. They are:
Attribute Grammar
Keep as "Attribute Grammars"
Cabal, packaging, build and distribution tools
This should be two categories: "Cabal internals" and "Software packaging/distribution tools". Keep Cabal internals, possibly keep the other
Categorical Programming
Denotational design
Digital Forensics
keep
Fault Tolerant Server Software
Mathematics
drop (possibly keep FTSS, maybe change the name)
Programming using Arrows
Possibly keep with a different name
Proving observational equivalence between Haskell programs
drop
Transactional business applications development
I'm not entirely sure what this means, specifically if it's business transactions or db/software transactions.
UNIX Scripting and Tool Authoring
keep as "UNIX Scripting"
Of the remaining 32 skills, some of them fall in the "too specific" range just a bit (software transactional memory, property based testing), but I'm inclined to let it slide. These 32 are:
Advanced type-level programming (GADTs, TypeFamilies, proofs, etc.) Algorithmic Problem Solving Bioinformatics Concurrent Haskell DSL Design Darcs internals Foreign Function Interface (FFI) Formal Verification Functional graphics programming (2D, 3D, GPU) GHC internals Generic Programming Graphical User Interfaces Happstack Web Framework Hardware Acceleration DSLs Haskell on embedded devices High Assurance Software Development High-performance Haskell Metaprogamming via Template Haskell Natural Language Processing (tagging, parsing, translation,...) Physics & Simulation Programming language translation Property based testing (QuickCheck) Purely functional data structures — design and implementation Reverse Engineering Robotics and Automation Signal Processing Software Transactional Memory Teaching Haskell Web development (HTML, CSS and Javascript) Yesod Web Framework
I would argue for keeping most of these. I do think that skills based on specific packages (Happstack, Yesod, STM?) perhaps should be dropped, except for packages that are integral to the Haskell universe (compilers, Cabal, Darcs?, QuickCheck?). For these packages, I think the "-internals" categories are the most useful. What about rolling Happstack, Yesod, etc. into "Haskell Web Frameworks", and possibly also keeping the "Web Development (HTML, CSS and Javascript)" category? John

On 20 October 2010 21:38, John Lato
Cabal, packaging, build and distribution tools
This should be two categories: "Cabal internals" and "Software packaging/distribution tools". Keep Cabal internals, possibly keep the other
What does "Cabal internals" refer to? Actually using Cabal as a library? Developing Cabal itself?
Fault Tolerant Server Software
Mathematics
drop (possibly keep FTSS, maybe change the name)
Why drop mathematics? (I'd prefer it to be split up, but mathematically-oriented programming is a large/important subset of Haskell "skills" IMHO, though I admit I'm biased).
UNIX Scripting and Tool Authoring
keep as "UNIX Scripting"
What's wrong with "Tool Authoring"? To some, scripting implies quick+dirty temporary applications/scripts as opposed to a well-engineered tool. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic < ivan.miljenovic@gmail.com> wrote:
On 20 October 2010 21:38, John Lato
wrote: Cabal, packaging, build and distribution tools
This should be two categories: "Cabal internals" and "Software packaging/distribution tools". Keep Cabal internals, possibly keep the other
What does "Cabal internals" refer to? Actually using Cabal as a library? Developing Cabal itself?
Developing Cabal itself.
Fault Tolerant Server Software
Mathematics
drop (possibly keep FTSS, maybe change the name)
Why drop mathematics? (I'd prefer it to be split up, but mathematically-oriented programming is a large/important subset of Haskell "skills" IMHO, though I admit I'm biased).
Mathematics is far too broad to be useful. I agree that subsets of math would be informative (e.g. statistical modelling, linear algebra, graph theory, dif. eq., etc.), but how do you break up Mathematics and assign users who listed it as a skill to its constituent parts?
UNIX Scripting and Tool Authoring
keep as "UNIX Scripting"
What's wrong with "Tool Authoring"? To some, scripting implies quick+dirty temporary applications/scripts as opposed to a well-engineered tool.
Again, "Tool Authoring" is too broad to be useful. What else do software developers do but author tools? Contrast to "UNIX Scripting", which means familiarity with at least a shell and likely one or more of awk, perl, python, regexes, ... I don't make quality judgements just from the term "scripting", and I'd certainly rather use a well-engineered script over a quick+dirty tool. John

On 20 October 2010 12:30, John Lato
Again, "Tool Authoring" is too broad to be useful.
Who are the skills lists for? Recruiters, other Haskellers to form "strike forces", something else? For the recruiters I think they are somewhat obscure unless Well-Typed or Galois were searching. Trivia - I did once apply for a job that listed 'attribute grammars' as a requirement - as far as I could tell it was compiler development / maintenance for a special purpose chip, but I never heard back so I guess I missed the mark on the other skills.

On 20 October 2010 21:52, Henning Thielemann
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010, John Lato wrote:
Mathematics
I'd be interested in how many Haskellers refer to Category Theory here, and how many to other mathematical subjects. :-)
I for one refer to other stuff; my understanding of CT is almost non-existant. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com
participants (4)
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Henning Thielemann
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Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
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John Lato
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Stephen Tetley