I ended up discussing in university with the person next to me about Haskell. He's an old-timer who's even been to conferences, but it's a long time since he's looked at Haskell. He asked me to write "what's new in Haskell", but I'm not too experienced myself. I didn't realize asking how long it's been for him, but he mentioned about new fronts in optimizing compilers and specifically mentioned a compiler that could compile to legible C. I've been following Haskell only for a couple of years, so my intuition tells me that he means `-fvia-c`, and I mentioned to him that it's about to be deprecated and replaced with the llvm back-end. I also mentioned hackage, but he hadn't heard of it. He mentioned that he'd like to use Haskell for his master's thesis, but we got a interrupted when he said what it was about. Formal something or other. I trust you fellow Haskellers have better understanding of the time frame, and can think of something interesting new features, libraries, communities etc. that's since been emerged. I ask you to give me something interesting to give him and reinstate his interest. -- Mats Rauhala MasseR
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:33, Mats Rauhala
I didn't realize asking how long it's been for him, but he mentioned about new fronts in optimizing compilers and specifically mentioned a compiler that could compile to legible C. I've been following Haskell
only for a couple of years, so my intuition tells me that he means
`-fvia-c`, and I mentioned to him that it's about to be deprecated and replaced with the llvm back-end. I also mentioned hackage, but he hadn't heard of it.
The legible C thing is probably jhc ( http://repetae.net/computer/jhc/ ). It's GHC's *illegible* registerized C that is being phased out; the slightly-more-legible ANSI C mode used for porting is staying, though. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
On 11:57 Fri 30 Mar , Brandon Allbery wrote:
The legible C thing is probably jhc ( http://repetae.net/computer/jhc/ ). It's GHC's *illegible* registerized C that is being phased out; the slightly-more-legible ANSI C mode used for porting is staying, though.
Oh wow, I thought jhc was discontinued, but just checked the repositories and mailing lists and it's alive and well. No idea where I got the idea that it was discontinued. Going a little bit on tangent here, but if I understood correctly, jhc is meant to do more optimization. How does this compare to for example ghc? -- Mats Rauhala MasseR
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Mats Rauhala
On 11:57 Fri 30 Mar , Brandon Allbery wrote:
The legible C thing is probably jhc ( http://repetae.net/computer/jhc/ ). It's GHC's *illegible* registerized C that is being phased out; the slightly-more-legible ANSI C mode used for porting is staying, though.
Oh wow, I thought jhc was discontinued, but just checked the repositories and mailing lists and it's alive and well. No idea where I got the idea that it was discontinued. Going a little bit on tangent here, but if I understood correctly, jhc is meant to do more optimization. How does this compare to for example ghc?
Both are optimizing compilers, but jhc is intended (by the author) to try different things that ghc. If ghc does it one way, jhc will try to explore other aspects of the design space. The last time this came up, I think someone said that jhc uses GRIN for optimizations: http://www.cafepress.com/haskell_books.12273129 GHC tries to optimize by rewriting and also by conventional means. Both try to specialize away uses of type classes, but as I understand it jhc is far more aggressive, or maybe even has a different run-time representation? Anyway, back to the original topic, some of the big items that I would mention to your friend include: * cabal/cabal-dev * hackage (and some of the better known libraries, Data.Vector/Data.Text/Data.ByteString) * Type Families * Haskell 2010 is the current rev of the language standard Jason
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:45:40 +0200, Jason Dagit
Anyway, back to the original topic, some of the big items that I would mention to your friend include: * cabal/cabal-dev * hackage (and some of the better known libraries, Data.Vector/Data.Text/Data.ByteString) * Type Families * Haskell 2010 is the current rev of the language standard
Don't forget: - Haddock - Cabal (the standard, not the program) - Darcs - Hoogle - Hayoo - Better documentation in the base libraries - The Haskell Platform - Better performance of compiled Haskell programs - Improved Windows support - The ongoing Haskell Prime process for updating the Haskell language (See http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_prime ) - IDEs: EclipseFP and Leksah - The popular xmonad ( http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad ) - The debugger in GHCi - The popularity of Haskell on Reddit, Stack Overflow, IRC channels - The new site http://www.haskellers.com/ - More books, see http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html - An enormous growth of e-mail on the mailing lists - An enormous growth of the number of packages - QuickCheck (this one is not very new) - The Industrial Haskell Group - The haskell.org committee (was formed a year ago to formalise the previously ad-hoc arrangements around managing the haskell.org infrastructure and money, see http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell.org_committee ) - New concepts for I/O: enumerators/iteratees, conduits - Many new extensions to the language, in GHC There is probably even more. For changes in the Haskell language, see http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_2010 Regards, Henk-Jan van Tuyl -- http://Van.Tuyl.eu/ http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html Haskell programming --
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Mats Rauhala
Oh wow, I thought jhc was discontinued, but just checked the repositories and mailing lists and it's alive and well. No idea where I got the idea that it was discontinued. Going a little bit on tangent here, but if I understood correctly, jhc is meant to do more optimization. How does this compare to for example ghc?
I occasionally take some time off for other projects, but jhc is alive and well. The C produced is quite legible and even better, portable. Everything from the Nintendo DS to the iPhone has been a target. I am always welcoming active developers. No better way to kick me into jhc mode than submitting some patches. :) 0.8.1 is almost due to be put out, it will be the first to be 100% haskell 2010 (and haskell 98) compliant and has a lot of other neat features over 0.8.0. John
John> 0.8.1 is almost due to be put out, it will be the first to be 100% John> haskell 2010 (and haskell 98) compliant and has a lot of other neat John> features over 0.8.0. That's great ! I can't wait to put it into my toolbox. Haskell compilers are all pieces of art, bringing beauty to our daily work. Thanks a lot to everyone involved in them. -- Paul
participants (6)
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Brandon Allbery -
Henk-Jan van Tuyl -
Jason Dagit -
John Meacham -
Mats Rauhala -
Paul R