I'll condense my remaining replies to this thread into a single message, to save people a little noise. Henning Thielemann:

I guess there will also be some lines about how to write efficient code by using ByteString et. al.?

You bet!

What about a public darcs repository where people can constantly download and review modifications? People could even send patches to the authors (editors?).

We'll certainly consider those possibilities. I don't know how our publisher will feel about them, but they've been great so far. Alfonso Acosta:

Existential types are a must [...]

Yes, we'll be sure to cover existentials. Thanks for the nudge (and ndm, and others too). Hans van Thiel:

Compared to Erlang. While other functional languages are mentioned occoasionally on this list, Erlang is notably absent.

I'm reluctant to do comparisons with other languages; that's too easy to interpret as evangelism, a game I don't want to play. It also invites the plaintive cry that someone's favourite language was dissed through omission.

Number two on my wish list: interfacing with Java.

The temptation to cover new and exciting material is of course strong. LambdaVM is both, but it's also an in-progress one-person master's project. We think we'd do best to focus on libraries and extensions that are either distributed as standard or widely used.

How about 'Applying Haskell' or something like that as the working title; what is the 'real world' anyway?

The details may vary, but it's roughly this: newtype IO a = IO (State# RealWorld -> (# State# RealWorld, a #)) :-)

bos:

I'll condense my remaining replies to this thread into a single message, to save people a little noise.

I'd just add that the response is literally overwhelming! Some 100-odd volunteers to review, and a lot of mail besides. Please bear with us as we try to surface under this mountain of correspondance -- I'll try to summarise some answers tomorrow. Yay, Haskell community! -- Don

What about a public darcs repository where people can constantly download and review modifications? People could even send patches to the authors (editors?).

I realise that everyone wants to eat their own dog food, but really, if you want the code samples to be available to the masses, you'll use Subversion instead of darcs. No offense to the darcs creators, but 1) Only current Haskellers use it; everyone else either uses Subversion or is migrating to it; 2) It's not suitable for medium- to large-scale software development (after 24 hrs+ of importing code for a project underway, still incomplete, I cancelled it and used Subversion, which completed its import in 45 minutes); 3) I can browse a Subversion repository with a web browser instead of having to download code from the repository from the command line (of course command line is still available). Sometimes viewing a version of a code sample online is all that is needed to answer a question, and in that case I prefer to look instead of downloading a file that I have to delete. --doug

Hi

...

3) I can browse a Subversion repository with a web browser instead of having to download code from the repository from the command line (of course command line is still available). Sometimes viewing a version of a code sample online is all that is needed to answer a question, and in that case I prefer to look instead of downloading a file that I have to delete.

Darcs does have Darcsweb that can be used for the same purpose, with the full array of Darcs viewing features. Darcsweb isn't nearly as widespread as ViewCVS and the like, but it exists and can be set up easily enough.

http://darcs.haskell.org/darcsweb/darcsweb.cgi?r=yhc;a=summary - most things on haskell.org have a darcsweb, thats the one for Yhc. Plus I suspect that darcs will be discussed in the book, for building a library, in which case its only sensible to dogfood your own stuff. Not that darcs is dogfood, more like a chocolate cake :) Thanks Neil

On Fri, 25 May 2007, Neil Mitchell wrote:

http://darcs.haskell.org/darcsweb/darcsweb.cgi?r=yhc;a=summary - most things on haskell.org have a darcsweb, thats the one for Yhc.

Nice, I have not seen this before. Not all of my packages at darcs.haskell.org are listed. How can I add more of them?

On 26/05/07, Matthew Sackman wrote:

(On the other hand, I don't know of anyone outside immediate "haskellers" using Darcs.)

A lot of people in the Emacs subcommunity use darcs; many of them may have heard of Haskell but certainly wouldn't describe themselves as Haskellers. See http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/DaRcs for a few links. -- -David House, dmhouse@gmail.com

On 26/05/07, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:

darcs.pugscode.org/_darcs/ www.n-heptane.com/nhlab/repos/cabalDebianTemplate/_darcs/ www.khjk.org/~sm/code/advopost/_darcs/

These are also Haskell repos that you missed, bringing the figure up to 8. Still, I wouldn't describe that as "just used by Haskellers". It's also interesting to note that there's a fairly large percentage of Ruby users using darcs. Perhaps we out to push more on this front? -- -David House, dmhouse@gmail.com

On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 14:05 -0500, Doug Kirk wrote:

I *want* people (and companies) to move to Haskell; therefore, I want to lower the entry "price". The goal is to introduce a new language, not a new SCM tool. You certainly wouldn't want to leave the impression that one MUST use darcs in order to use Haskell!

Fair enough. But you do not want to leave the impression that one must use SVN in order to use Haskell (or any other language, for that matter) either? Anyway, I am sure that can be avoided by a reasonable phrasing of the relevant chapter - caveat scriptor. Now, darcs is: a) really simple to get started with b) ubiquitous for Haskell programs - if you download something to install yourself, you will - as likely as not - use darcs to do the downloading. c) written in Haskell, serving as both an example of a 'real world' application, and as a possible target for the enterprising hacker. You could make a similar argument for the build system - should a Haskell book teach "make" instead of Cabal, just because it is more familar? -k

jon:

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 06:58:36 Ketil Malde wrote:

...

On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 14:05 -0500, Doug Kirk wrote:

...

I *want* people (and companies) to move to Haskell

As a complete noob considering making a commercial venture into Haskell, may I ask what people's opinions are on this? Are there many Haskell products?

Have a look at the industry page for the larger businesses using Haskell, http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_in_industry -- Don

On Fri, 25 May 2007, Doug Kirk wrote:

...

What about a public darcs repository where people can constantly download and review modifications? People could even send patches to the authors (editors?).

I realise that everyone wants to eat their own dog food, but really, if you want the code samples to be available to the masses, you'll use Subversion instead of darcs.

Code samples? I want darcs for the whole content of the book, preferably LaTeX!

On 29/05/07, Jules Bean wrote:

Doug Kirk wrote:

...

No offense to the darcs creators, but

1) Only current Haskellers use it; everyone else either uses Subversion or is migrating to it;

If that is true, then they have missed the point. DVC is a real win for most workflows.

The applicable alternatives to darcs are : bzr, git, mercurial, tla. They have different pros and cons which are discussed at length on various blogs.

svn just doesn't make the list; it's not a comparable project, because it's centralised. SVK is more plausible but since it is essentially a hack to implement decentralisation on top of centralisation, it has different design constraints than things designed from the bottom-up as decentralised.

How do the differing design constraints make svk not comparable? As far as I understood it, it's a decentralised version control system that happens to layer over a very popular existing system, and which therefore gets some of its goodies like working over http. osfameron

Jules Bean wrote:

...

No offense to the darcs creators, but

1) Only current Haskellers use it; everyone else either uses Subversion or is migrating to it;

If that is true, then they have missed the point. DVC is a real win for most workflows.

We are indeed using darcs, so this discussion is a bit moot. Regards,

On 5/29/07, Doug Kirk wrote:

OTOH, I work for companies, and they really value their assets, especially software assets. So they *want* centralized stuff, so they can ensure they have consistent backups (in the U.S.A. there is a lot of regulation under Sarbanes-Oxley that requires this stuff). Right now we're using ClearCase, which I abhor because it's so heavyweight...but it is centralized control.

Interestingly, using a decentralized version control does not rule out the possibility of centralized control and development. For example, darcs itself has a very centralized development even though the tool allows decentralization. The advantage is that people working on, for example, a feature branch can easily share patches via cherry picking. When the feature branch is ready to be merged darcs handles this in a way superior to svn[1] by doing the merge almost completely transparently. We're currently developing a feature branch at work under svn and every merge is a book keeping headache and at least one day of lost development time. In this respect, svn seems primitive, tedious and error-prone. Just check the svn red bean book for details on merging in svn. We have learned you need to manually track version numbers so you don't merge things twice. Perhaps my argument is more about svn vs. darcs, but those are the two version control systems I know best. [1] I will happily concede that darcs is not currently perfect in it's automated merging, especially in the case of conflicting patches. Just ask the ghc developers if this is a problem for them. But, that is also why there is a summer of code project this year to fix the problem. With a fair bit of retooling, darcs will handle this case better in the future and I'm confident this will become a problem of the past. Jason

I really hope they choose the flying squirrel. On 5/23/07, Dan Weston wrote:

What power animal have you chosen for the cover of your O'Reilly book? Alas, most of the good ones are gone already!

Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:

...

Bryan O'Sullivan, Don Stewart and John Goerzen are pleased, and frankly, very excited to announce that were developing a new book for O'Reilly, on practical Haskell programming. The working title is Real-World Haskell.

The plan is to cover the major techniques used to write serious, real-world Haskell code, so that programmers can just get to work in the language. By the end of the book readers should be able to write real libraries and applications in Haskell, and be able to:

* design data structures * know how to write, and when to use, monads and monad transformers * use Haskells concurrency and parallelism abstractions * be able to write parsers for custom formats in Parsec. * be able to do IO and binary IO of all forms * be able to bind Haskell to foreign functions in C * be able to do database, network and gui programming * know how to do exception and error handling in Haskell * have a good knowledge of the core libraries * be able to use the type system to track and prevent errors * take advantage of tools like QuickCheck, Cabal and Haddock * understand advanced parts of the language, such as GADTs and MPTCs.

That is, you should be able to just write Haskell!

The existing handful of books about Haskell are all aimed at teaching programming to early undergraduate audiences, so they are ill-suited to people who already know how to code. And while theres a huge body of introductory material available on the web, you have to be both tremendously motivated and skilled to find the good stuff and apply it to your own learning needs.

The time has come for the advanced, practical Haskell book.

Heres the proposed chapter outline:

1. Why functional programming? Why Haskell? 2. Getting started: compiler, interpreter, values, simple functions, and types 3. Syntax, type system basics, type class basics 4. Write a real library: the rope data structure, cabal, building projects 5. Typeclasses and their use 6. Bringing it all together: file name matching and regular expressions 7. All about I/O 8. I/O case study: a DSL for searching the filesystem 9. Code case study: barcode recognition 10. Testing the Haskell way: QuickCheck 11. Handling binary files and formats 12. Designing and using data structures 13. Monads 14. Monad case study: refactoring the filesystem seacher 15. Monad transformers 16. Using parsec: parsing a bioinformatics format 17. Interfacing with C: the FFI 18. Error handling 19. Haskell for systems programming 20. Talking to databases: Data.Typeable 21. Web client programming: client/server networking 22. GUI programming: gtk2hs 23. Data mining and web applications 24. Basics of concurrent and parallel Haskell 25. Advanced concurrent and parallel programming 26. Concurrency case study: a lockless database with STM 27. Performance and efficiency: profiling 28. Advanced Haskell: MPTCs, TH, strong typing, GADTs 29. Appendices

We're seeking technical reviewers from both inside and outside the Haskell community, to help review and improve the content, with the intent that this text will become the standard reference for those seeking to learn serious Haskell. If you'd like to be a reviewer, please drop us a line at book-review-interest@realworldhaskell.org, and let us know a little about your background and areas of interest.

Finally, a very exciting aspect of this project is that O'Reilly has agreed to publish chapters online, under a Creative Commons License! Well be publishing chapters incrementally, and seeking feedback from our reviewers and readers as we go.

You can find more details and updates at the following locations:

* The web site, http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/welcome/ * The authors, http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/about/ * The blog, http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/

-- Bryan O'Sullivan, Don Stewart and John Goerzen. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Tom Harper Computer Science Major '07 Syracuse University +1 949 235 0185 Public Key: http://aftereternity.co.uk/rth.asc

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 12:40:58PM -0700, Dan Weston wrote:

What power animal have you chosen for the cover of your O'Reilly book? Alas, most of the good ones are gone already!

"lamb"-da?

* Dan Weston [070523 12:41]:

What power animal have you chosen for the cover of your O'Reilly book? Alas, most of the good ones are gone already!

I'd like to suggest the Mantis shrimp because they have excellent vision, they're long lived and they pack a punch. I haven't checked, but it's almost certainly not already used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp

Magnus Therning wrote:

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 15:22:05 -0700, Scott Cruzen wrote:

...

* Dan Weston [070523 12:41]:

...

What power animal have you chosen for the cover of your O'Reilly book? Alas, most of the good ones are gone already!

I'd like to suggest the Mantis shrimp because they have excellent vision, they're long lived and they pack a punch.

I haven't checked, but it's almost certainly not already used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp

They have their menagerie online[1] so it's easy to check what animals that have been used already. Personally I think a sloth would be suited for a lazy language like Haskell :-)

Oh that has *got* to be used already! ;-)

Scott Cruzen wrote:

I'd like to suggest the Mantis shrimp because they have excellent vision, they're long lived and they pack a punch.

They certainly do. An excellent choice. Personally, I'd like to see the Giant Sea Bass., just because they're so stately: http://week.divebums.com/2006/Sep05-2006/index.html http://week.divebums.com/2006/Aug28-2006/index.html Actually, I'd like to see my favorite fish, the Sarcastic Fringehead, but I'm trying to be somewhat realistic: http://week.divebums.com/2006/Oct02-2006/fringehead_steve-murvine.jpg

Simon Marlow:

While we're on fish, what's wrong with the humble Haddock? :-)

It may at least make for a tasty curry ...

Last time I read O'Reilly's policy, it stated that you're free to suggest an animal, but that they have a full-time person that makes the decision on which animal is on the book. However, the bigger issue is that anybody familiar with O'Reillys product lines knows that their "Real World" series doesn't have any animals at all! On 5/23/07, Dan Weston wrote:

What power animal have you chosen for the cover of your O'Reilly book? Alas, most of the good ones are gone already!

Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:

...

Bryan O'Sullivan, Don Stewart and John Goerzen are pleased, and frankly, very excited to announce that were developing a new book for O'Reilly, on practical Haskell programming. The working title is Real-World Haskell.

The plan is to cover the major techniques used to write serious, real-world Haskell code, so that programmers can just get to work in the language. By the end of the book readers should be able to write real libraries and applications in Haskell, and be able to:

* design data structures * know how to write, and when to use, monads and monad transformers * use Haskells concurrency and parallelism abstractions * be able to write parsers for custom formats in Parsec. * be able to do IO and binary IO of all forms * be able to bind Haskell to foreign functions in C * be able to do database, network and gui programming * know how to do exception and error handling in Haskell * have a good knowledge of the core libraries * be able to use the type system to track and prevent errors * take advantage of tools like QuickCheck, Cabal and Haddock * understand advanced parts of the language, such as GADTs and MPTCs.

That is, you should be able to just write Haskell!

The existing handful of books about Haskell are all aimed at teaching programming to early undergraduate audiences, so they are ill-suited to people who already know how to code. And while theres a huge body of introductory material available on the web, you have to be both tremendously motivated and skilled to find the good stuff and apply it to your own learning needs.

The time has come for the advanced, practical Haskell book.

Heres the proposed chapter outline:

1. Why functional programming? Why Haskell? 2. Getting started: compiler, interpreter, values, simple functions, and types 3. Syntax, type system basics, type class basics 4. Write a real library: the rope data structure, cabal, building projects 5. Typeclasses and their use 6. Bringing it all together: file name matching and regular expressions 7. All about I/O 8. I/O case study: a DSL for searching the filesystem 9. Code case study: barcode recognition 10. Testing the Haskell way: QuickCheck 11. Handling binary files and formats 12. Designing and using data structures 13. Monads 14. Monad case study: refactoring the filesystem seacher 15. Monad transformers 16. Using parsec: parsing a bioinformatics format 17. Interfacing with C: the FFI 18. Error handling 19. Haskell for systems programming 20. Talking to databases: Data.Typeable 21. Web client programming: client/server networking 22. GUI programming: gtk2hs 23. Data mining and web applications 24. Basics of concurrent and parallel Haskell 25. Advanced concurrent and parallel programming 26. Concurrency case study: a lockless database with STM 27. Performance and efficiency: profiling 28. Advanced Haskell: MPTCs, TH, strong typing, GADTs 29. Appendices

We're seeking technical reviewers from both inside and outside the Haskell community, to help review and improve the content, with the intent that this text will become the standard reference for those seeking to learn serious Haskell. If you'd like to be a reviewer, please drop us a line at book-review-interest@realworldhaskell.org, and let us know a little about your background and areas of interest.

Finally, a very exciting aspect of this project is that O'Reilly has agreed to publish chapters online, under a Creative Commons License! Well be publishing chapters incrementally, and seeking feedback from our reviewers and readers as we go.

You can find more details and updates at the following locations:

* The web site, http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/welcome/ * The authors, http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/about/ * The blog, http://www.realworldhaskell.org/blog/

-- Bryan O'Sullivan, Don Stewart and John Goerzen. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe