December 2013 - Haskell

The future of array-oriented computing in Haskell — a survey
by Manuel M T Chakravarty 09 Dec '13

09 Dec '13

In the Programming Languages & Systems (PLS) group @ UNSW, we have spent a lot of energy on developing methods for high-performance array programming in a purely functional style. We are curious how our work is being used and what else the community would like to be able to achieve with libraries, such as Repa and Accelerate. Please help us by completing this survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qXPUR19kjKghrdxvE7P767HNy9-Lj81VSDS-l5MfN8… We will post the survey results. Thanks! Manuel

1 0

Haskell can sing
by Henning Thielemann 08 Dec '13

08 Dec '13

Hi all, it's again Advent time and I took the opportunity to program another song for you. Those who liked last year's songs [1,2,3] may also be interested in the new one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EQCgi5qa3E "Alta trinita beata" It employs the great Haskell live sequencer and a new speech synthesizer that I developed with Haskell and LLVM. You find additional information in the video description. Best, Henning [1] http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2012-December/023591.html [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fmxHM69zgI [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5k0wUh0lj8

2 1

Fully funded PhD studentships in Pervasive Parallelism at Edinburgh
by James Cheney 06 Dec '13

06 Dec '13

[Forwarded on behalf of the department. Types, languages, and verification for parallel, concurrent or distributed programming are possible topics.] Centre for Doctoral Training in Pervasive Parallelism http://pervasiveparallelism.inf.ed.ac.uk/ The EPSRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in Pervasive Parallelism at the University of Edinburgh is pleased to offer 12 fully funded four year studentships across all areas relevant to the "pervasive parallelism challenge". Students undertake an initial MSc by Research year, followed by three years of PhD study. Research Topics in Pervasive Parallelism The computing industry faces its most disruptive challenge for fifty years. For performance and energy reasons, parallelism permeates all layers of the computing infrastructure, from the manycore CPUs and GPGPUs inside smartphones up to supercomputers and globally networked distributed systems. These systems generate fascinating research challenges in many areas of Computer Science, from theory to practice. * How should we design parallel programming languages and compilers? * How should we design and implement parallel architectures and communication networks? * What theories do we need to prove properties of such systems, or to model and reason about their performance? * How can concurrent and distributed systems be made secure? * How can we trade performance for energy in context sensitive ways? * How can we make algorithms and applications robust against the failures inevitable in exascale systems? * How can we effectively debug, trace, or understand the provenance of results of complex parallel, concurrent or distributed programs? Students at the CDT in Pervasive Parallelism will address such "pervasive parallelism challenges", undertaking the fundamental research required to transform methods and practices. They will develop not only deep expertise in their own specialism, but crucially, an awareness of its relationships to other facets of the challenge. Our industrial partnership and engagement programme will ensure that our research is informed by real world case-studies and will provide a source of diverse internship opportunities for our students. Studentships The Centre is now recruiting its first cohort of students, to begin study in September 2014. Funding is predominantly for UK and EU qualified applicants, but a smaller number of excellent international students may also be supported. Applicants must have a good first degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Electronics, or a similar discipline relevant to the area in which they plan to work. For more information, including application details see: http://pervasiveparallelism.inf.ed.ac.uk/ About the School of Informatics and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre. The CDT in Pervasive Parallelism is a collaboration between the School of Informatics and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC). The School of Informatics is Europe's largest computing department, highest rated for research and ranked 'excellent' in the UK according to the most recent research assessment exercises. The size and reputation of the Schools means that it is big enough to provide outstanding facilities for students which in turn attracts some of the brightest minds to study and teach there. The School has an extremely successful track record of generating spin-out activity, with an estimated 44% of all University of Edinburgh spin outs since 2008 emerging from the School of Informatics alone. Recently awarded a Silver Athena SWAN Award, it is also recognised as an institution with a commitment to advancing women's careers. For more information about postgraduate study opportunities at the School of Informatics see: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/postgraduate/ The EPCC is the UK's largest supercomputing centre. It aims to accelerate the effective exploitation of novel computing throughout industry, academia and commerce. This is achieved through a range of activities spanning undergraduate and advanced training programmes, service provision, industrial affiliation, research and contract work. EPCC houses an exceptional range of supercomputers, with 75 staff committed to the solution of real-world problems. EPCC plays a leading role in PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe). For more information about EPCC see http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/

1 0

BX 2014: Paper deadline extended
by Soichiro Hidaka 05 Dec '13

05 Dec '13

Third International Workshop on Bidirectional Transformations (BX 2014) *Deadline extended due to many requests. Original deadline became abstract deadline.* Friday March 28th, 2014 Athens, Greece co-located with EDBT/ICDT 2014 Web site: http://bx-community.wikidot.com/bx2014:home Submission site: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=bx2014 Paper length: 3-8 pages, ACM format. In-progress work is highly encouraged, if limited to 4 pages. Bidirectional transformations (bx) are a mechanism for maintaining the consistency of at least two related sources of information. Such sources can be relational data, software models, documents, graphs, trees, and so on. BX are an emerging topic in a wide range of research areas with prominent presence at top conferences in different fields. However, much of the research in bx tends to get limited exposure outside of a single field of study. The purpose of this workshop series is not only to further research into bx, but to promote cross-disciplinary research and awareness in the area. The first two instances of this workshop, BX'12 and BX'13, served as a dedicated venue for bx in all relevant areas, including: - Databases - Programming Languages - Software Engineering - Graph Transformation This instance of the workshop is the first at a database venue. The workshop rotates between venues in different areas to promote the cross-disciplinary nature of the work, as methodologies used for bx range from classical program transformation and updateable views to graph transformation techniques, from ad-hoc techniques for data synchronization to the development of domain-specific languages and their integration. We also solicit papers on model/metamodel co-evolution, which is a different yet closely related subject. Aims and Topics The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners, established and new, interested in bidirectional transformations from different perspectives, such as: * inversion of data exchange mappings * new perspectives on view updatability * data-schema co-evolution and data synchronization * software-model synchronization * consistency analysis * (coupled) software/model transformations * language-based approaches Submissions can be: * novel research concepts and results * position papers and research perspectives * application of bx in new domains * analysis of gaps between formal concepts and application scenarios * examination of the efficiency of algorithms * analysis/classification of requirements for bx technologies * proposals and justification for benchmarks * summary papers providing novel comparisons between existing technologies * case studies and tool support Submitted papers must be in ACM format in accordance with the other workshops and proceedings at EDBT/ICDT. Papers may be 3-8 pages in length; the length of the paper should be appropriate for the level of completeness of the work. Important Dates: Abstract submission date: 7th December 2013 Paper submission date: 13th December 2013 Author notification: 7th January 2014 Camera-ready date: 20th January 2014 Workshop date: 28th March 2014 Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings of EDBT/ICDT and will be available at the conference.

1 0

Post for Haskellers Mail List
by Katy Ovens 05 Dec '13

05 Dec '13

Good morning, I would like to post the below to the Haskell Mail List: HASKELLERS REQUIRED!! Career Opportunities in Cambridge (UK) I am currently hiring for Senior Software Engineers, Principal Software Engineers and Software Architects with proficiency in Haskell programming. This is a fantastic opportunity to join a global, world-leading technology business working on cutting-edge product development in the field of HPC and Big Data. Packages are highly flexible to attract the best talent. For more information - get in touch with Katy Ovens on 02392 322 308 or send a message to kovens(a)strgroup.co.uk http://www.strgroup.co.uk/ Katy Ovens , CertRP Lead Account Manager - Engineering 023 9232 2308 07511 011 918 kovens(a)strgroup.co.uk 1 Quay Point, Northarbour Road, Portsmouth, PO6 3TD, UK - http://www.strgroup.co.uk/ Join our social networks: http://www.linkedin.com/company/str-group http://www.facebook.com/pages/STR-Group/157182227861 http://twitter.com/#!/STR_Group All detailed pricing models will exclude local taxation charges unless otherwise stated, for a copy of our terms and conditions please http://www.strgroup.co.uk/terms-and-conditions.cms.asp STR Ltd is a limited company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 04064332. Registered office: 1 Quay Point, Northarbour Road, Portsmouth, PO6 3TD. Please note that STR Ltd may monitor email traffic data and also the content of email for the purposes of security and staff training. IMPORTANT: This message is private and confidential. If you have received this message in error, please notify us and remove it from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. STR Limited therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content and is believed to be clean.

1 0

PLMW: Mentoring at POPL. Second Call for Participation
by Alan Schmitt 04 Dec '13

04 Dec '13

Students! You less than have one week left to apply for funding to come to both POPL and PLMW! CALL FOR PARTICIPATION SIGPLAN Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop, San Diego, USA Tuesday January 21, 2014 Co-located with POPL 2014 PLMW web page: http://plmw2014.inria.fr/ After the resounding success of the first two Programming Languages Mentoring Workshops at POPL 2012 and POPL 2013, we proudly announce the 3rd SIGPLAN Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop (PLMW), co-located with POPL 2014 and organised by Amal Ahmed, Benjamin C. Pierce, and Alan Schmitt. The purpose of this mentoring workshop is to encourage graduate students and senior undergraduate students to pursue careers in programming language research. This workshop will provide technical sessions on cutting-edge research in programming languages, and mentoring sessions on how to prepare for a research career. We will bring together leaders in programming language research from academia and industry to give talks on their research areas. The workshop will engage students in a process of imagining how they might contribute to our research community. We especially encourage women and underrepresented minority students to attend PLMW. This workshop is part of the activities surrounding POPL, the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, and takes place the day before the main conference. One goal of the workshop is to make the POPL conference more accessible to newcomers. We hope that participants will stay through the entire conference. A number of sponsors have generously donated scholarship funds for qualified students to attend PLMW. These scholarships should cover reasonable expenses (airfare, hotel, and registration fees) for attendance at both the workshop and the POPL conference. Students attending this year will get one year free student membership of SIGPLAN, unless they prefer to opt out during their application. The workshop registration is open to all. Students with alternative sources of funding are welcome. APPLICATION for PLMW scholarship: The scholarship application can be accessed from the workshop web site (http://plmw2014.inria.fr/) The deadline for full consideration of funding is 10th December, 2013. Selected participants will be notified from Friday 14th December, and will need to register for the workshop by December 24th. SPEAKERS: - Andrew Appel: Software Verification - Isil Dillig: Program Analysis - Nate Foster: You and your PhD - Derek Dreyer: Progress & Preservation Considered Boring: A Paean to Parametricity - John Hughes: Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking - Greg Morrisett: Think Big: Some Crazy Thesis Topics - Peter O'Hearn: Program Logic and Analysis - Peter Sewell: From POPL to the Jungle and Back - Phil Wadler: You and Your Research and The Elements of Style - Stephanie Weirich: Why you should care about dependent types FAQ: We have put a page answering the most frequent questions at http://plmw2014.inria.fr/faq.html SPONSORS: Facebook Google Jane Street Microsoft Research NSF SIGPLAN

1 0

[TFP 2014] 1st Call For Papers
by Peter Achten 03 Dec '13

03 Dec '13

Dear reader, Please find included the first call for papers for next year's Trends In Functional Programming event, organized by Jurriaan Hage from Utrecht University, The Netherlands. With kind regards, Peter Achten Communication chair TFP ----------------------------- C A L L F O R P A P E R S ----------------------------- ======== TFP 2014 =========== 15th Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming May 26-28, 2014 Utrecht University Soesterberg, The Netherlands http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/TFP2014/WebHome The symposium on Trends in Functional Programming (TFP) is an international forum for researchers with interests in all aspects of functional programming, taking a broad view of current and future trends in the area. It aspires to be a lively environment for presenting the latest research results, and other contributions (see below), described in draft papers submitted prior to the symposium. A formal post-symposium refereeing process then selects a subset of the articles presented at the symposium and submitted for formal publication. Selected papers will be published as a Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) volume. TFP 2014 will be the main event of a pair of functional programming events. The other is the International Workshop on Trends in Functional Programming in Education (TFPIE). TFPIE will take place on May 25th. The TFP symposium is the heir of the successful series of Scottish Functional Programming Workshops. Previous TFP symposia were held in Edinburgh (Scotland) in 2003, in Munich (Germany) in 2004, in Tallinn (Estonia) in 2005, in Nottingham (UK) in 2006, in New York (USA) in 2007, in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) in 2008, in Komarno (Slovakia) in 2009, in Oklahoma (USA) in 2010, in Madrid (Spain) in 2011, St. Andrews (UK) in 2012 and Provo (Utah, USA) in 2013. For further general information about TFP please see the TFP homepage. INVITED SPEAKERS TFP is pleased to announce talks by the following two invited speakers: John Hughes of Chalmers, Goteborg, Sweden, is well-known as author of Why Functional Programming Matters, and as one of the designers of QuickCheck (together with Koen Claessen); the paper on QuickCheck won the ICFP Most Influential Paper Award in 2010. Currently he divides his time between his professorship and Quviq, a company that performs property-based testing of software with a tool implemented in Erlang. Dr. Geoffrey Mainland received his PhD from Harvard University where he was advised by Greg Morrisett and Matt Welsh. After a two year postdoc with the Programming Principles and Tools group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, he is now an assistant professor at Drexel University. His research focuses on high-level programming language and runtime support for non-general purpose computation. SCOPE The symposium recognizes that new trends may arise through various routes. As part of the Symposium's focus on trends we therefore identify the following five article categories. High-quality articles are solicited in any of these categories: Research Articles: leading-edge, previously unpublished research work Position Articles: on what new trends should or should not be Project Articles: descriptions of recently started new projects Evaluation Articles: what lessons can be drawn from a finished project Overview Articles: summarizing work with respect to a trendy subject Articles must be original and not submitted for simultaneous publication to any other forum. They may consider any aspect of functional programming: theoretical, implementation-oriented, or more experience-oriented. Applications of functional programming techniques to other languages are also within the scope of the symposium. Topics suitable for the symposium include: Functional programming and multicore/manycore computing Functional programming in the cloud High performance functional computing Extra-functional (behavioural) properties of functional programs Dependently typed functional programming Validation and verification of functional programs Using functional techniques to reason about imperative/object-oriented programs Debugging for functional languages Functional programming in different application areas: security, mobility, telecommunications applications, embedded systems, global computing, grids, etc. Interoperability with imperative programming languages Novel memory management techniques Program analysis and transformation techniques Empirical performance studies Abstract/virtual machines and compilers for functional languages (Embedded) domain specific languages New implementation strategies Any new emerging trend in the functional programming area If you are in doubt on whether your article is within the scope of TFP, please contact the TFP 2014 program chair, Jurriaan Hage at J.Hage(a)uu.nl. BEST PAPER AWARDS To reward excellent contributions, TFP awards a prize for the best paper accepted for the formal proceedings. TFP traditionally pays special attention to research students, acknowledging that students are almost by definition part of new subject trends. A student paper is one for which the authors state that the paper is mainly the work of students, the students are listed as first authors, and a student would present the paper. A prize for the best student paper is awarded each year. In both cases, it is the PC of TFP that awards the prize. In case the best paper happens to be a student paper, that paper will then receive both prizes. SPONSORS TFP is financially supported by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), Well-Typed and Erlang Solutions. PAPER SUBMISSIONS Acceptance of articles for presentation at the symposium is based on a lightweight peer review process of extended abstracts (4 to 10 pages in length) or full papers (16 pages). The submission must clearly indicate which category it belongs to: research, position, project, evaluation, or overview paper. It should also indicate whether the main author or authors are research students. In the case of a full student paper, the paper will receive additional feedback by one of the PC members shortly after the symposium has taken place. We shall use EasyChair for the refereeing process. IMPORTANT DATES Submission of draft papers: March 17, 2014 Notification: March 24, 2014 Registration: April 7, 2014 TFP Symposium: May 26-28, 2014 Student papers feedback: June 9th, 2014 Submission for formal review: July 1st, 2014 Notification of acceptance: September 8th, 2014 Camera ready paper: October 8th, 2014 PROGRAM COMMITTEE Peter Achten Radboud University Nijmegen Emil Axelsson Chalmers Lucilia Camarao de Figueiredo Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto Laura Castro University of A Coruna Frank Huch Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel Matthew Fluet Rochester Institute of Technology Jurriaan Hage (chair) University of Utrecht Yukiyoshi Kameyama University of Tsukuba Andrew Kennedy Microsoft Research Tamas Kozsik Eotvos Lorand University Ben Lippmeier University of New South Wales Luc Maranget INRIA Jay McCarthy Brigham Young University Marco T. Morazan Seton Hall University Ricardo Pena Universidad Complutense de Madrid Alexey Rodriguez madvertise Sven-Bodo Scholz Heriot-Watt University Manuel Serrano INRIA Sophia Antipolis Simon Thompson University of Kent Tarmo Uustalu Inst of Cybernetics David Van Horn Maryland University Janis Voigtlaender University of Bonn

1 0

[ANN] Gtk2Hs 0.12.5
by Hamish Mackenzie 03 Dec '13

03 Dec '13

Today, we welcome into the world version 0.12.5 of Gtk2Hs[1], a set of Haskell bindings to many of the libraries included in the GTK+/Gnome platform. GTK+ is an extensive and mature multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. GUIs written using Gtk2Hs use themes to resemble the native look on Windows. GTK+ is the toolkit used by Gnome, one of the two major GUI toolkits on Linux. On Mac OS programs written using Gtk2Hs are run by Apple's X11 server but may also be linked against a native Aqua implementation of GTK+. You can look forward to using the following improvements in this release: * Initial support for GTK+ 3 GTK+ 2 package GTK+ 3 package gtk gtk3 gtksourceview2 gtksourceview3 webkit webkitgtk3 webkit-javascriptcore webkitgtk3-javascriptcore * Fixes build problems with the latest Cabal. * WebKitGTK packages (webkit and webkitgtk3) include DOM functions. * Package for using WebKitGTK's JavaScript engine. The source code repository has been moved to https://github.com/gtk2hs and travis-ci.org is used to check it builds. This release has been tested on Linux and Windows with a variety of combinations of GTK+ and GHC versions. Installation ------------ Assuming you have the necessary GTK+ base libraries already installed, you can get the basic set of Haskell bindings with these two commands: cabal install gtk2hs-buildtools cabal install gtk or cabal install gtk2hs-buildtools cabal install gtk3 Other available packages include gconf glade gstreamer gtkglext gtksourceview2 (or gtksourceview3) soegtk svgcairo vte webkit (or webkitgtk3) webkit-javascriptcore (or webkitgtk3-javascriptcore) There are longer-winded instructions that include pointers on getting the GTK+ base libraries installed on the website [2]. Features -------- * Automatic memory management (unlike some other C/C++ GUI libraries, GTK+ provides proper support for garbage-collected languages) * Unicode support * High quality vector graphics using Cairo * Extensive reference documentation * An implementation of the ``Haskell School of Expression'' graphics API Community --------- You can keep up with the latest developments on the mailing lists: * gtk2hs-users [3]: discussions about writing code that uses Gtk2Hs * gtk2hs-devel [4]: discussions about modifying the Gtk2Hs bindings Check out the latest code via darcs: git clone https://github.com/gtk2hs/gtk2hs.git Or complain on the bug tracker [6]. This code was brought to you by: Duncan Coutts Axel Simon Andy Stewart Peter Gavin Jens Petersen John Obbele Hans van Thiel Daniel Wagner Bertram Felgenhauer Peter Davies Ian-Woo Kim Hamish Mackenzie ...and many, many more [1] http://projects.haskell.org/gtk2hs/ [2] https://github.com/gtk2hs/gtk2hs/blob/master/INSTALL [3] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gtk2hs-users [4] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gtk2hs-devel [5] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gtk2hs-commit [6] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/gtk2hs/

1 0

AI4FM 2014: Call for Short Contributions
by Iain Whiteside 02 Dec '13

02 Dec '13

------------------------------------------------- AI4FM 2014 - the 5th International Workshop on the use of AI in Formal Methods http://www.ai4fm.org/ai4fm-2014/ Singapore, 12th or 13th May, 2014 In association with FM 2014 ------------------------------------------------- --- First Call for Contributions --- Important Dates --------------- Submission deadline: March 01, 2014 Notification of acceptance: March 08, 2014 Final version due: April 22, 2014 Workshop: May 12th or 13th, 2014 General --------------- This workshop will bring together researchers from formal methods, automated reasoning and AI; it will address the issue of how AI can be used to support the formal software development process, including requirement analysis, modelling and proof. Previous AI4FM workshops have included a mix of industrial and academic participants and we anticipate attracting a similarly diverse audience. Rigorous software development using formal methods allows the construction of an accurate characterisation of a problem domain that is firmly based on mathematics; by applying standard mathematical analyses, these methods can be used to prove that systems satisfy formal specifications. Research has shown that with tools backed by mature theory, formal methods are becoming cost effective and their use is easier to justify, not as an academic exercise, legal requirement or niche markets -- but as part of a business case. However, while industrial use of formal methods is increasing, in order to make it more mainstream, the cost of applying formal methods, in terms of mathematical skill level and development time, must still be reduced. We believe that AI can help with these issues. Scope --------------- We encourage submissions presenting work in progress, tools under development, and PhD projects, in order that the workshop can become a forum for active dialogue between the groups involved in automated reasoning, formal methods and artificial intelligence. Particular areas of interest include, but are not limited to: - The use of AI and automated reasoning to support and guide the formal modelling process. - The use of AI and automated reasoning in the requirement capture process. - The use of AI to reuse formal models, programs and proofs. - The use of machine learning to support interactive theorem proving. - The use of machine learning to enhance automated theorem proving. - The development of search heuristics. - The use of AI for term synthesis, invariant generation, lemma discovery and concept invention. - The use of AI for counter-example generation. - The use of constraint solvers in formal methods. - The role of AI planning for formal systems developments, from requirements to the end product (including software and hardware). - The interplay between reasoning and modelling and the role of AI in this framework. - Ontologies in the formal engineering process. History --------------- This will be the fifth workshop in the series. Previous workshops were held at: - Rennes, France, July 2013 @ ITP (www.ai4fm.org/ai4fm-2013/) - Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany, July 2012 (www.dagstuhl.de/12271) - Edinburgh, UK, April 2011 (www.ai4fm.org/ai4fm-2011.php) - Newcastle, UK, May 2010 (www.ai4fm.org/ko-meeting.php) Submission --------------- The main aim for the workshop is discussion, thus submissions do not need to be original. Extended versions of submissions may have been published previously, or submitted concurrently with or after AI4FM 2014 to another workshop, conference or a journal. Submission is by email to: ai4fm2014(a)ai4fm.org Please submit an abstract up to 3 pages in a PDF format. The extended abstracts will be handed out to all participants, and will be made into a technical report prior to the workshop. Acceptance for presentation at the workshop will be made by the organisers based on relevance to the workshop. Organisers --------------- * Leo Freitas (Newcastle University, UK) * Gudmund Grov (Heriot-Watt University, UK) * Iain Whiteside (Newcastle University, UK) Contact Details ---------------- If you have any queries, please email the organisers at the following email address: ai4fm2014(a)ai4fm.org

1 0