January 2009 - Haskell

(CfP) UML&AADL'2009 : CALL FOR PAPERS
by Isabelle Perseil 11 Jan '09

11 Jan '09

********************************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS: UML&AADL2009 http://www.artist-embedded.org/artist/UML-AADL-2009.html Workshop held in conjunction with ICECCS 2009 The fourteenth IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems http://www.iceccs.org/ June 02, 2009 Potsdam, Germany ************************************************************************ Submission deadline: February 20, 2009 -------------------------------------- Topics ====== New real-time systems have increasingly complex architectures because of the intricacy of the multiple interdependent features they have to manage. They must meet new requirements of reusability, interoperability, flexibility and portability. These new dimensions favor the use of an architecture description language that offers a global vision of the system, and which is particularly suitable for handling real-time characteristics. Due to the even more increased complexity of distributed, real-time and embedded systems (DRE), the need for a model-driven approach is more obvious in this domain than in monolithic RT systems. The purpose of this workshop is to provide an opportunity to gather researchers and industrial practitioners to survey existing efforts related to behavior modeling and model-based analysis of DRE systems. This workshop seeks contributions from researchers and practitioners interested in all aspects of the representation, analysis, and implementation of DRE system behavior and/or architecture models. To this end, we solicit papers (no more than 6 pages long) related to, but not limited to, the following principal topics: - Multi-domain specific modeling languages - Model transformation and generative approaches - Model-based Methodologies - Integration of different formalisms (e.g., Simulink/StateFlow, StateMate and Scade-drive) - Model Checking of architecture specifications - ADLs behavioral models simulation, Scheduling analysis and Worst-case execution time prediction Workshop Format =============== This full-day workshop will consist of an introduction of the topic by the workshop organizers, presentations of accepted papers, and in depth discussion of previously identified subjects emerging from the submissions. A summary of the discussions will be made available. Submission and Publication ========================== To contribute, please send a position paper or a technical paper to agusti[dot]canals[at]c-s[dot]fr with ICECCS09 UML&AADL Workshop in the title. Papers should not exceed 6 pages. Submitted manuscripts should be in English and formatted in the style of the IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Format. Preferably, submissions should be in PDF format. All selected papers will be published in the IEEE Computer Society Press Proceedings. IMPORTANT DATES =============== Submission deadline: February 20, 2009 All Notification of acceptance: March 05, 2009 Workshop date: June 02, 2009 Organizational sponsors ======================= ARTIST NoE OMG Organizers and Programme Steering Committee =========================================== Jean-Michel Bruel (IRIT, France) Agusti Canals (CS, France) Robert de Simone (INRIA, France) Sébastien Gérard (CEA-LIST, France) Isabelle Perseil (TELECOM ParisTech, France) Publicity Chair =============== Sun Meg (CWI, The Netherlands) IEEE CS TCCX Coordinator ======================== Mike Hinchey (NASA GSFC and Loyola College in Maryland, USA) Programme Committee =================== Yamine Ait Ameur (LISI / ENSMA, France) Keijiro Araki (Kyushu University, Japan) Grady Booch (IBM Fellow, USA) Agusti Canals (CS, France) Juan Antonio de la Puente (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain) Sebastien Demathieu (THALES, France) Dionisio De Niz Villasenor (SEI, Carnegie Mellon, USA) Vincent Englebert (University of Namur, Belgium) Madeleine Faugère (THALES, France) Mamoun Filali (IRIT, France) Robert France (Colorado State University, USA) Sébastien Gérard (CEA-LIST, France) Patrick Heymans (University of Namur, Belgium) Irfan Hamid (Microsoft Corp, Canada) J.J.M. Hooman (Embedded Systems Institute, The Netherlands) Bruce Lewis (US Army AMCOM) Johan Lilius (Åbo Akademi University, Finland) Ricardo J. Machado (University of Minho, Portugal) Sun Meg (CWI, The Netherlands) Dominique Mery (LORIA, France) Nenad Medvidovic (University of Southern California, USA) Thierry Millan (IRIT, France) Richard Paige (University of York, United Kingdom) Marc Reynolds (University of Western Australia, Australia) José Raúl Romero Salguero (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain) Bernhard Rumpe (Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany) Douglas C. Schmidt (Vanderbild University, USA) Françoise Simonot Lion (LORIA, France) Oleg Sokolsky (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Roy Sterritt (University of Ulster, United Kingdom) Jörn Guy Süß ( University of Queensland, Australia) Jing Sun (University of Auckland, New Zealand) Bedir Tekinerdogan (Bilkent University, Turkey) Martin Törngren (KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) Laurence Tratt (Bournemouth University, United Kingdom) Tullio Vardanega (University of Padua, Italy) François Vernadat (CNRS-LAAS, France) Thomas Vergnaud (THALES, France) Eugenio Villar (Universidad de Cantabria, Spain) Sergio Yovine (CNRS-Verimag, France) Roberto V. Zicari (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)

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HaskellWiki Interruption for Upgrade
by Ashley Yakeley 11 Jan '09

11 Jan '09

I will be upgrading HaskellWiki to the latest stable version of MediaWiki (1.13.3) over the next few hours. The plan is this: 1. Switch off HaskellWiki. This may involve switching off the Apache server running haskell.org. 2. Dump the database to a file. 3. Download MediaWiki 1.13.3. 4. Run its upgrade process. 5. Install useful extensions. I'm currently looking at this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam 6. Tweak config file. 7. Switch everything back on. 8. Post again here. -- Ashley Yakeley

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Haskell Weekly News: Issue 100 - January 10, 2009
by Brent Yorgey 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haskell Weekly News http://sequence.complete.org/hwn/20090110 Issue 100 - January 10, 2009 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to issue 100 of HWN, a newsletter covering developments in the [1]Haskell community. Welcome to the 100th (!) issue of the Haskell Weekly News, suitably published on your friendly neighborhood HWN editor's 1000th birthday (base 3). If you ever have content to be included in the HWN (announcements, blog posts, major life news) or a suggestion on how the HWN could be more useful to you as a window into the goings-on of the Haskell community, please don't hesitate to send it along, using the contact information at the end of each issue. Announcements Haskell BLAS bindings version 0.7. Patrick Perry [2]announced the [3]release of version 0.7 of the [4]blas package, Haskell bindings to the BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms) library. According to Patrick, this release is "a major milestone---it is finally the library with all of the features that I want." X Haskell Bindings. Antoine Latter [5]announced a preview release of the [6]X Haskell Bindings. The goal of the library is to provide low-level access to the X11 protocol, in the spirit of the [7]X C Bindings. Data.TCache 0.5.5. Alberto G. Corona [8]announced the 0.5.5 release of the [9]TCache package, a transactional data cache with configurable persistence. This version adds the the capability to safely handle transactions, and incrementally serialize many data types simultaneously in the same piece of code. haskell-src-exts 0.4.8. Niklas Broberg [10]announced a new release (0.4.8) of the [11]haskell-src-exts package. This is a bug-fix release in the wake of the flurry of bug reports due to [12]hlint. bytestring-trie 0.1.2 (bugfix). wren ng thornton [13]announced a bugfix release for [14]bytestring-trie, efficient finite maps from (byte)strings to values. This release fixes a bug in alterBy, and adds an Eq instance. wxHaskell 0.11.1. Jeremy O'Donoghue [15]announced the release of [16]wxHaskell 0.11.1, a Haskell binding for the wxWidgets GUI library. The main highlights include support for XRC resource files, support for wxWidgets 2.8.x and GHC 6.10, and preliminary support for Cabal and Hackage. cabal2doap 0.1. Greg Heartsfield [17]announced the [18]release of [19]Cabal2doap, which generates Description of a Project (DOAP) XML/RDF data representing a Haskell project. This should make it possible for semantic web project aggregation sites to find and index Haskell projects. Jobs Jane Street is hiring functional programmers. Yaron Minsky [20]reminded everyone that [21]Jane Street is still hiring! Jane Street now has over 30 OCaml developers, and is actively looking to hire more in Tokyo, London and New York. PhD, postdoc, and engineering positions at HATS. CFP [22]announced the availability of 10 PhD, postdoc, and engineering positions within the HATS project (Highly Adaptable and Trustworthy Software using Formal Models), a new Integrated Project funded by the European Union, within the programme "Future and Emerging Technologies" (FET). The goal of HATS is a tool-supported framework and formal methodology for the development of long-lived and trustworthy software systems. Hypothetical Haskell job in New York. Tony Hannan [23]asked how many would be interested in applying to a hypothetical Haskell job in New York, assuming his boss can be convinced to use Haskell. Blog noise [24]Haskell news from the [25]blogosphere. * Lennart Augustsson (augustss): [26]LLVM arithmetic. * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [27]Bootstrapping 6. * Patrick Perry: [28]New Haskell BLAS bindings!. * Clemens Fruhwirth: [29]Liskell standalone. * The GHC Team: [30]Benchmarking recent improvements in parallelism. * Galois, Inc: [31]Tech Talk: OpenTheory: Package Management for Higher Order Logic Theories. * Eric Kow (kowey): [32]fold diagram revisited?. * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [33]Bootstrapping 5. * Lennart Augustsson (augustss): [34]LLVM. * Sebastian Fischer: [35]Monadic and Queue-Based Tree Search. * Philip Wadler: [36]Well-typed programs can't be blamed. * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [37]Bootstrapping 4. * Manuel M T Chakravarty: [38]GPU Kernels as Data-Parallel Array Computations in Haskell.. * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [39]Bootstrapping 3. * Tom Schrijvers: [40]Monadic Constraint Programming. * Conal Elliott: [41]Another angle on functional future values. * >>> Greg Heartsfield: [42]Cabal2doap. * Christopher Lane Hinson: [43]MaybeArrow?. * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [44]Bootstrapping 2. * Darcs: [45]darcs 2.2.0pre2 ready for testing!. * Alson Kemp: [46]Sad about Import Cycles. * GHC / OpenSPARC Project: [47]Bootstrapping. * gamr7: [48]Accessing Recursive Haskell Data Structures from C/Python. Quotes of the Week * jml: A wise man once said, "the program isn't debugged until the last user is dead". * pumpkin: OMG I <3 RECORD SYNTAX * Olathe: <Olathe> > floor (1.0/0.0) <lambdabot> 179769... <Olathe> But you can see that Haskell can calculate the maximum Integer. * lilac: <drdozer> gha! I'm drowning in the haskell number hierarchy again <lilac> drdozer: magic 8-ball says 'add calls to fromIntegral' * monopoly: do not exit IO. go directly to the REPL, do not pass any parameters or continuations. * EvilTerran: [on category theory] the same place of nightmares that spawned zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms :P About the Haskell Weekly News New editions are posted to [49]the Haskell mailing list as well as to [50]the Haskell Sequence and [51]Planet Haskell. [52]RSS is also available, and headlines appear on [53]haskell.org. To help create new editions of this newsletter, please see the information on [54]how to contribute. Send stories to byorgey at cis dot upenn dot edu. The darcs repository is available at darcs get [55]http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/ . References 1. http://haskell.org/ 2. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/50195 3. http://quantile95.com/2009/01/09/new-haskell-blas-bindings/ 4. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/blas 5. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/50170 6. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/xhb 7. http://xcb.freedesktop.org/ 8. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/50169 9. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/TCache 10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/50119 11. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/haskell-src-exts 12. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/hlint 13. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/49956 14. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/bytestring-trie 15. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/49898 16. http://wxhaskell.sourceforge.net/ 17. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16718 18. http://blog.gregheartsfield.com/2009/01/04/cabal2doap/ 19. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/cabal2doap 20. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16741 21. http://janestreet.com/ 22. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/16736 23. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/50015 24. http://planet.haskell.org/ 25. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blog_articles 26. http://augustss.blogspot.com/2009/01/llvm-arithmetic-so-we-want-to-compute-… 27. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/01/bootstrapping-6.html 28. http://quantile95.com/2009/01/09/new-haskell-blas-bindings/ 29. http://blog.clemens.endorphin.org/2009/01/liskell-standalone.html 30. http://ghcmutterings.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/46/ 31. http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/01/08/tech-talk-opentheory-package-manageme… 32. http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2009/01/fold-diagram-revisited.html 33. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/01/bootstrapping-5.html 34. http://augustss.blogspot.com/2009/01/llvm-llvm-low-level-virtual-machine-is… 35. http://www-ps.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~sebf/projects/monad-vs-queue.html 36. http://wadler.blogspot.com/2009/01/well-typed-programs-cant-be-blamed.html 37. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/01/bootstrapping-4.html 38. http://justtesting.org/post/68696876 39. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/01/bootstrapping-3.html 40. http://tomschrijvers.blogspot.com/2009/01/monadic-constraint-programming.ht… 41. http://conal.net/blog/posts/another-angle-on-functional-future-values/ 42. http://blog.gregheartsfield.com/2009/01/04/cabal2doap/ 43. http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/01/04/maybearrow/ 44. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/01/test-run-of-patched-ghc-6.html 45. http://blog.darcs.net/2009/01/darcs-220pre2-ready-for-testing.html 46. http://www.alsonkemp.com/haskell/sad-about-import-cycles/ 47. http://ghcsparc.blogspot.com/2009/01/building.html 48. http://gamr7.com/blog/?p=66 49. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell 50. http://sequence.complete.org/ 51. http://planet.haskell.org/ 52. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed 53. http://haskell.org/ 54. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN 55. http://code.haskell.org/~byorgey/code/hwn/

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Jane Street is hiring functional programmers
by Yaron Minsky 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Greetings all. I just wanted to remind people that Jane Street is still hiring. Despite the problems besetting much of the financial industry, we have grown strongly in the last few years in our people, our technology, the scope of our business and its profitability. We now have over 30 OCaml developers, and we are actively looking to hire more in Tokyo, London and New York. For someone who cares about functional programming, Jane Street is an interesting place to consider. Jane Street has invested deeply in OCaml, to the point where we now have the largest team of OCaml programmers in any industrial setting, and probably the world's largest OCaml codebase--almost a million lines. We really believe in functional programming, and use OCaml for everything from research to systems adminstration to trading systems. The atmosphere is informal and intellectual, with a focus on learning. The work itself is deeply challenging, and you get to see the practical impact of your efforts in quick and dramatic terms. Jane Street is also a small enough place that people have the freedom to get involved in many different areas of the business. Unlike many financial firms, software and technology are considered a core part of what we do, not some segmented-off cost center that the people who run the business don't think about. Jane Street is a place where people really care about the quality of the software, to the point that several of the most senior members of the firm, who do not have technology backgrounds, nonetheless review critical portions of the codebase before they can go into production. If you'd like to learn more, here are some links. First, here's a paper I wrote for the Monad Reader: http://www.haskell.org/sitewiki/images/0/03/TMR-Issue7.pdf We also have a technically-oriented blog: http://ocaml.janestreet.com For a (recruiting-oriented) overview of Jane Street, here's the firm website: http://janestreet.com If you're interested, send me a resume and cover letter. y

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ANNOUNCE: X Haskell Bindings
by Antoine Latter 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Folks, I'd like to announce a preview-release of the X Haskell Bindings. The goal of the library is to provide low-level access to the X11 protocol, in the spirit of the X C Bindings This is a "preview" because I expect that the interface will still need to change - but I do plan on bump the minor-version number when that happens. On Hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/xhb What works: All X protocol requests have corresponding functions. I haven't tested all of them. Requests are sent asynchronously - the caller is not blocked until they need to examine the result of the request Errors and Events are unpacked into Haskell data types It should be safe to use the same connection in multiple threads What needs improvement: * There's no documentation - you pretty much need to be sitting down with the X Protocol reference while using this library. Once we can get documentation into the XML that this library is generated from, we should be able to generate Haddock documentation at the same time * A lot of parameters are specified using integer types, even though a proper Haskell enum-like data type exists. * Many functions take a ValueParam argument, which is not fun to work with in a language like Haskell. I have plans for how to make these more type-safe, but this is something else that requires more information in the XML protocol descriptions. * There's no way to share a connection between XHB and libraries built against the Xlib bindings. * I haven't done any benchmarking, so it's possible that all of this is pretty slow. Keep in mind that this is a library for the X Protocol - it alone is not a replacement for XLib - XLib does a lot more than pushing and pulling on a file-handle. Related releases: Spencer Janssen has released FFI bindings to Xauth: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Xauth-0.1 I've released a small library for determining the byte-ordering of the system: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/byteorder-1.0.0 Related projects: X C Bindings: http://xcb.freedesktop.org/ -Antoine

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ANNOUNCE: Data.TCache 0.5.5
by Alberto G. Corona 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

The main addition of this versión is the capablity to safely handle transact, and serialize to permanent storage many datatypes simultaneously in the same piece of code and incrementally. Just register each new datatype (with registerType :: <Type>). So it is not necessary to glue all types in advance in a single algebraic datatype. I suppose taht "enhanced composablility" applies to this feature. http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/TCache In this release: Added a Data.TCache.Dynamic. (SEE dynamicsample.hs) - Can handle, transact, and serialize to disk many datatypes simultaneously and incrementally - Dynamic uses the same interface than TCache and add *DResource(s) calls for handling many datatypes simultaneously - Safe dynamic data handling trough a lighter, indexable and serializable version of Data.Dynamic - Added KEY object for retrieving any object of any type. Data.Tcache is a transactional cache with configurable persistence. It tries to simulate Hibernate for Java or Rails for Ruby. The main difference is that transactions are done in memory trough STM. There are transactional cache implementations for some J2EE servers like JBOSS. TCache uses STM. It can atomically apply a function to a list of cached objects. The resulting objects go back to the cache (withResources). It also can retrieve these objects (getResources). Persistence can be syncronous (syncCache) or asyncronous, wtih configurable time between cache writes and configurable cache clearance strategy. the size of the cache can be configured too . All of this can be done trough clearSyncCacheProc. Even the TVar variables can be accessed directly (getTVar) to acceess all the semantic of atomic blocks while maintaining the persistence of the TVar updates. Persistence can be defined for each object: Each object must have a defined key, a default filename path (if applicable). Persistence is pre-defined in files, but the readResource writeResource and delResource methods can be redefined to persist in databases or whatever. There are Samples in the package that explain the main features.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Hypothetical Haskell job in New York
by John Goerzen 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 01:06:44PM +0100, Manlio Perillo wrote: > John Goerzen ha scritto: >> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 09:46:36PM +0100, Manlio Perillo wrote: >>> I'm speaking about servers, not clients. >>> >>> How much of pure Haskell internet servers are used in a production >>> environment, in the "open internet" (and not in restricted LANs)? >> >> Does that really matter? I tend to judge technology based on its >> merits for my work, not on who uses it. > > Well, testing a server is not easy. > You can have a server that works for you without problems, but in > different environment it gives problems. I completely understand that, as a sysadmin that has to maintain mission-critical systems. Unfortunately, it's also so often used as a justification for using "whatever everyone else has". So many people buy Exchange for that reason, as an example. Exchange has a pretty long history of bugs that make it really unsuitable for use in the Enterprise, yet people use it anyway because they think everyone uses it. A particularly amusing example is at http://software.complete.org/software/issues/show/114 - my little OfflineIMAP program appears to be able to take down entire Exchange databases and force a restore from backup, because Exchange has a hard-coded limit of 32k different mail header names *per installation*, and OfflineIMAP generates one unique header each time it uploads a message to the server. If my program can do that accidentally, imagine what someone with a will to do that could do. Nobody would have ever tried Haskell, Python, or Perl in mission-critical situations if they always thought like that. Somebody has to be first, and I see no problem with it being us, as long as we are confident of the outcome. Part of the calculus has to be: 1) Can we test it under stress? 2) How confident are we that it will behave right under conditions we can't test? (Esp. malicious ones) 3) Can we fix it ourselves if it breaks? How many others can fix it? I really like Haskell because of #2. While there is no 100% guarantee, I feel better about Haskell not throwing a type error in some obscure condition than I do about Python not doing so. I also like #2 because of the availability of both HUnit and QuickCheck. Write your code right, and you can QuickCheck a significant part of it. -- John

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10 PhD, PostDoc, and Engineering Positions offered!!
by CFP 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

10 PhD, PostDoc, and Engineering Positions offered!! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | HATS: Highly Adaptable and Trustworthy Software using Formal Models | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HATS is a new Integrated Project funded by the European Union, within the programme "Future and Emerging Technologies" (FET) of the 7th Framework Programme (subject to contract) starting March 2009. The project partners from Chalmers Technical University, Gothenborg, Sweden University of Oslo, Norway Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Technical University of Madrid, Spain IMDEA Software, Spain Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, University of Bologna, Italy, Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, Netherlands Norwegian Computer Center, Oslo, Norway Fredhopper B.V., Amsterdam, Netherlands Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental SE, Kaiserslautern, Germany, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium are jointly advertising several 3-5 year PhD, PostDoc, and Engineering positions. The goal of HATS is a tool-supported framework and formal methodology for the development of long-lived and trustworthy software systems. Specifically, HATS will turn software product family (SWPF) development into a rigorous approach. The technical core of the project is an Abstract Behavioral Specification language which will allow precise description of SWPF features and components and their instances. For further information see: http://www.hats-project.eu Topic areas: Applicants should have a background and/or interest in one of the topics software modeling, modeling and programming languages, formal methods, verification, language-based security, type systems, or concurrency theory. The following positions are offered: * 2 PhD positions with emphasis on formal modeling and verification at Chalmers University of Technology. One of the positions is in the EU project CHARTER which is closely related to HATS. Application deadline is 9th February 2009. Contact: Prof. Reiner Haehnle. Further details and information on how to apply at http://www.chalmers.se/cse/EN/news/vacancies/positions/two-ph-d-student * A Research Software Engineer at Fredhopper (Amsterdam). The position will comprise of industrial research on modeling and verification of key components of Fredhopper's flagship product within the EU-funded HATS research project. Fredhopper is the Nr. 1 provider of Search & Merchandising solutions for online business in Europe and industrial leader in the HATS project. Apply by 31 January 2009 for the most optimal procedure. Contact for project information: Dr. Nikolay Diakov. More information and how to apply at: http://www.fredhopper.com/public/company-opps.php?cat=0&subcat=0#research-s… * 2 PostDoc positions at the University of Bologna. The emphasis is on formal modeling and verification of the kind of concurrent systems studied in Hats using various techniques, including behavioural techniques and type systems. Application deadline is 31 January (later applications may also be taken into account). Contact: Prof. Davide Sangiorgi, see: http://www.cs.unibo.it/~sangio/Hats/vacancies.txt * 3 PhD positions with emphasis on static analysis and security at the Technical University of Madrid/IMDEA Software. One of the positions is in the DOVES Spanish project, which is closely related to HATS. The application deadline is 25 January. Later applications may also be taken into account if the positions are not covered. Contact: Prof. German Puebla. Further details and information on how to apply at http://clip.dia.fi.upm.es/Job_Openings/hats-doves-phd-grants.html * 1 PhD and 1 PostDoc position in the area of software modeling and verification at the University of Kaiserslautern. The emphasis in the area of software modeling is on semantically founded integration of behavioral software models, feature-based descriptions of variability and programs. The emphasis in verification is on modular techniques for object-oriented models and model refinement. Application deadline is January 31. Later applications may also be taken into account. Contact: Prof. A. Poetzsch-Heffter. Further details and information on how to apply at http://softech.informatik.uni-kl.de/Homepage/OffeneStellen * Further positions will be announced at this space! Applicants should have (or expect to have at the start of employment): * For a PhD position: a good Masters level or excellent Bachelor level degree (or equivalent) in computer science, mathematics, or a closely related discipline with knowledge in the areas above. Please see also individual requirements at each site which can differ. * For a Postdoc position: a PhD in computer science or mathematics, preferably with research experience in one of the listed topic areas. * For a software engineer position: a Masters or PhD level level degree (or equivalent) in computer science, mathematics, or a closely related discipline with good knowledge in the areas of program verification, automata theory or discrete math. Knowledge of Java and some programming experience count as a plus. Regardless of the specific application instructions, each application should contain: 1) a full CV including letters of recommendation 2) a research statement, indicating the research directions you are interesting in and what relevant experience you have 3) transcripts of degree results where available. To apply, please follow the links given above. Expressions of interest received by 15 January 2009 are guaranteed full consideration. Specific application deadlines may vary. Early contact would be appreciated.

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ANNOUNCE: haskell-src-exts 0.4.8
by Niklas Broberg 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Fellow Haskelleers, it is my pleasure to announce the new release of the haskell-src-exts package, version 0.4.8: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/haskell-src-exts… darcs get http://code.haskell.org/HSP/haskell-src-exts This is a bug-fix release in the wake of the flurry of bug reports I received due to Neil Mitchell's release of hlint. Not all bugs have been squashed, but all the ones that I could handle with fairly small changes to the library should be. Those include deriving for MPTCs, importing constructor symbols, inline pragmas in instance declarations, scoped type variables, and a few more. There are some minor non-backwards compatible changes to the abstract syntax, but nothing too serious. The most pervasive is that the Match and PatBind constructors have an extra argument of type Maybe Type, representing an optional type signature. Derivings also are no longer just a list of class names, since those classes can now have extra parameters. Four things remain on the bug list: - Support for explicitly kinded arguments to type families. Shouldn't be too hard, but will require changes to the AST that I will leave for the next release. - Support for (un-parenthesised) higher-ranked types as arguments. haskell-src-exts supports e.g. foo :: b -> (forall a . [a]) -> b but not foo :: b -> forall a . [a] -> b. Supporting the latter is simply a parser issue, but a rather tricky one. - Correct handling of hyphened vars (an artifact of HSX/HSP) vs minus operators. This one is nasty. - Support for Unicode symbols for e.g. ->. Fixing that would require me to have a Unicode-compliant editor, which it appears I don't. And I couldn't have someone else submit a patch either, since then I couldn't open the file anymore in my editor. So unless someone can point out a good Unicode-aware editor for Windows, I'm afraid this is a feature that won't be implemented. If you find anything else that haskell-src-exts fails on, please report it. Cheers and Happy Haskelling, /Niklas

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Hypothetical Haskell job in New York
by Tony Hannan 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

Hello Haskellers, I'm trying to convince my boss to use Haskell. His main concern is finding people who know Haskell when hiring. He is comfortable with Java because he knows he can always find a Java developer. So if I advertised we were looking for Haskell programmers in New York City, how many would respond? Please reply to this email if you would respond. Email me privately if you like and I will post the results to haskell-cafe later. Thanks, Tony

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