[Austin-FP] Reading Group Introductions Thread
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Sukant Hajra
May 4, 2010, 7:23:07 PM5/4/10
to aust...@googlegroups.com
[Sorry, I didn't mean to send that last message (the hotkey for "send" is
way too accessible), but this message is largely an extension of that
thought.]
I had a wonderful time with the five of us that were able to make it to the
last meeting, but it looks like there's more interested in the reading group.
So I was wondering if we could use this thread to introduce ourselves. Maybe
that way we don't have so much boilerplate to get out of the way when we do
meet in person?
I'll start, just to see if this is a good idea or not. And I'll try to keep
this in context of the reading group.
FP Formalism Expertise:
I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, so I'm
missing formal education in most of the foundational algebra that motivates
FP theory.
What I've picked up is from scattered web reading, programming languages
classes, and hear-say.
For instance, I know of monads only in the context of Haskell. I couldn't
begin to tell you the difference between a monad and a monoid. And the
"Category Theory for Beginners" slides were mostly new information for me.
And I'm intuiting that arrows might be more or less morphisms. . . but I'm
not sure.
Practical FP Programming Experience:
I'm very comfortable with a lot of the straight-forward FP ideas that are
in popular dynamically type-checked languages these days like closures,
first-class functions, etc.
But for languages like Scala and Haskell, where richer type systems come
into play, I'm still at more or less a beginner level -- lots of reading,
but no practical experience.
Mostly, all the serious work I've done for pay has been in an imperative
landscape.
Interest for the reading group:
- any reading that highlights design pitfalls. FP throws out a large
toolkit. But I don't see much literature to help avoid bad designs. For
instance, does pattern matching come with the same admonitions that
Java's "instanceof" comes with? Or is it a slightly different beast with
its own considerations since it's really about destructuring binds?
- which leads me to Real World Haskell. I read the first half, which was
largely a review of the Gentle Introduction to Haskell. . . so I haven't
gotten to the "real world" part.
- some of the "classic" papers by Wadler, Jones, etc. I may have read a
few already, but it was years ago, and I wouldn't mind the review.
- non-classic papers that underscore language design like Odersky's
Scalable Component Abstractions.
- Peirce's Category Theory book if it's recommended (I don't have a copy
yet).
- anything that keeps a mathematical concept grounded relative to
programming. Mathematics doesn't scare me, but it's easy to get lost in
the formalisms without some context of what's motivating the study.
Anyway, I hope this helps. If anyone is motivated, just reply to the thread
with whatever introduction you think works.
Sorry if you guys already know each other. I'm just new to the group, so it
would help me out at least.
-Sukant
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way too accessible), but this message is largely an extension of that
thought.]
I had a wonderful time with the five of us that were able to make it to the
last meeting, but it looks like there's more interested in the reading group.
So I was wondering if we could use this thread to introduce ourselves. Maybe
that way we don't have so much boilerplate to get out of the way when we do
meet in person?
I'll start, just to see if this is a good idea or not. And I'll try to keep
this in context of the reading group.
FP Formalism Expertise:
I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, so I'm
missing formal education in most of the foundational algebra that motivates
FP theory.
What I've picked up is from scattered web reading, programming languages
classes, and hear-say.
For instance, I know of monads only in the context of Haskell. I couldn't
begin to tell you the difference between a monad and a monoid. And the
"Category Theory for Beginners" slides were mostly new information for me.
And I'm intuiting that arrows might be more or less morphisms. . . but I'm
not sure.
Practical FP Programming Experience:
I'm very comfortable with a lot of the straight-forward FP ideas that are
in popular dynamically type-checked languages these days like closures,
first-class functions, etc.
But for languages like Scala and Haskell, where richer type systems come
into play, I'm still at more or less a beginner level -- lots of reading,
but no practical experience.
Mostly, all the serious work I've done for pay has been in an imperative
landscape.
Interest for the reading group:
- any reading that highlights design pitfalls. FP throws out a large
toolkit. But I don't see much literature to help avoid bad designs. For
instance, does pattern matching come with the same admonitions that
Java's "instanceof" comes with? Or is it a slightly different beast with
its own considerations since it's really about destructuring binds?
- which leads me to Real World Haskell. I read the first half, which was
largely a review of the Gentle Introduction to Haskell. . . so I haven't
gotten to the "real world" part.
- some of the "classic" papers by Wadler, Jones, etc. I may have read a
few already, but it was years ago, and I wouldn't mind the review.
- non-classic papers that underscore language design like Odersky's
Scalable Component Abstractions.
- Peirce's Category Theory book if it's recommended (I don't have a copy
yet).
- anything that keeps a mathematical concept grounded relative to
programming. Mathematics doesn't scare me, but it's easy to get lost in
the formalisms without some context of what's motivating the study.
Anyway, I hope this helps. If anyone is motivated, just reply to the thread
with whatever introduction you think works.
Sorry if you guys already know each other. I'm just new to the group, so it
would help me out at least.
-Sukant
--
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To post to this group, send email to aust...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to austin-fp+...@googlegroups.com.
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Chance
May 11, 2010, 6:46:40 AM5/11/10
to Austin Functional Programmers
Thanks for sending this Sukkant.
I started this group a few years back because it seemed that, while
people in industry were becoming curious about FP, they had no way to
gain experience in the concepts or understand the basic ideas by other
working programmers. Many of us who went to UT as undergrads were
fortunate enough to be able to explore the topic freely, but I have
found over the years that this was a surprisingly rare opportunity for
undergrads. So hopefully the group (and the development of a reading
group) will help to bring together the experienced with the curious.
As for me, my undergrad was in cs at UT (Austin) and my Master's is in
Bioinformatics from UT (Houston). While I am still interested in that
area, I also became more generally interested in how we model, verify
and communicate about programs. I see functional programming as a big
piece to that discussion, and that is more or less where my FP
interest began. I, like Sukkant, lack a deep formal background in FP
but over the years have accumulated my knowledge through books, web
reading and a willingness to ask stupid questions. I have been
fortunate enough to work in some environments which gave me the
freedom to use languages a little more friendly to FP, and have had
some pretty favorable outcomes in those projects. I have still never
been paid to program in Haskell, but always have my eye out for that
opportunity. :)
My reading interests are very similar to Sukkant's, although if anyone
wants to explore an interesting topic where the motivation is unclear
- I would still like to hear about it. Sometimes creating a
motivation for work that seems otherwise just an interesting
abstraction can be a good deal of fun in my opinion.
Please consider introducing yourself if you have any interest in the
reading group, even if it is very brief it would be nice to know who
is thinking about showing up.
Regards,
Chance
I started this group a few years back because it seemed that, while
people in industry were becoming curious about FP, they had no way to
gain experience in the concepts or understand the basic ideas by other
working programmers. Many of us who went to UT as undergrads were
fortunate enough to be able to explore the topic freely, but I have
found over the years that this was a surprisingly rare opportunity for
undergrads. So hopefully the group (and the development of a reading
group) will help to bring together the experienced with the curious.
As for me, my undergrad was in cs at UT (Austin) and my Master's is in
Bioinformatics from UT (Houston). While I am still interested in that
area, I also became more generally interested in how we model, verify
and communicate about programs. I see functional programming as a big
piece to that discussion, and that is more or less where my FP
interest began. I, like Sukkant, lack a deep formal background in FP
but over the years have accumulated my knowledge through books, web
reading and a willingness to ask stupid questions. I have been
fortunate enough to work in some environments which gave me the
freedom to use languages a little more friendly to FP, and have had
some pretty favorable outcomes in those projects. I have still never
been paid to program in Haskell, but always have my eye out for that
opportunity. :)
My reading interests are very similar to Sukkant's, although if anyone
wants to explore an interesting topic where the motivation is unclear
- I would still like to hear about it. Sometimes creating a
motivation for work that seems otherwise just an interesting
abstraction can be a good deal of fun in my opinion.
Please consider introducing yourself if you have any interest in the
reading group, even if it is very brief it would be nice to know who
is thinking about showing up.
Regards,
Chance
Duke Banerjee
May 11, 2010, 9:43:08 AM5/11/10
to Austin Functional Programmers
Guys,
I'll introduce myself as well. I did my undergraduate work at UT
Austin in CS, "double majoring" in pre-med.
I had originally intended to go to med school and did CS only because
the Zoology department advisor told
me I didn't need to take a biology related major to be in the pre-med
program. I did fine until Organic Chemistry,
where I did very well in the lecture portion but did very poorly in
the lab. With visions of malpractice lawsuits,
I dropped pre-med and went full-time with CS. I'm currently looking
towards getting my Master's degree through
the Software Engineering program at UT.
I've been in the industry for almost 10 years now, primarily doing
imperative work starting with C and C++, and
now finally settling on Java. Though, I'm always interested in what
the C#/.NET people are doing. While I learn
Scheme in college, functional programming never entered my radar until
I rediscovered Haskell by stumbling
across an excellent tutorial called "All About Monads":
http://www.haskell.org/all_about_monads/html/index.html
In order to understand how Monads really work, I had to take out a
piece of paper to write out the expansions by
hand to see how it all fit together. This is really what got me
hooked, that functional programming requires a
higher level of mathematical thinking with its emphasis on pure
functions and program-building via function
composition. This lead to other interesting rabbit holes such as
Arrows and Functional Reactive Programming
for UI programming, and Software Transactional Memory and parallel
data structures instead of threads for
concurrency. I have a real admiration for the Haskell guys to root out
state wherever they find it!
While I don't use a functional programming language in my day job, I
have found that certain patterns follow over,
such as side-effect free functions and immutability, which I feel has
made me a better programmer in the
imperative world. And so, for both intellectual curiosity and to help
me improve my game, I am very interested
in reading FP papers and having lively discussions!
See y'all later!
Duke
I'll introduce myself as well. I did my undergraduate work at UT
Austin in CS, "double majoring" in pre-med.
I had originally intended to go to med school and did CS only because
the Zoology department advisor told
me I didn't need to take a biology related major to be in the pre-med
program. I did fine until Organic Chemistry,
where I did very well in the lecture portion but did very poorly in
the lab. With visions of malpractice lawsuits,
I dropped pre-med and went full-time with CS. I'm currently looking
towards getting my Master's degree through
the Software Engineering program at UT.
I've been in the industry for almost 10 years now, primarily doing
imperative work starting with C and C++, and
now finally settling on Java. Though, I'm always interested in what
the C#/.NET people are doing. While I learn
Scheme in college, functional programming never entered my radar until
I rediscovered Haskell by stumbling
across an excellent tutorial called "All About Monads":
http://www.haskell.org/all_about_monads/html/index.html
In order to understand how Monads really work, I had to take out a
piece of paper to write out the expansions by
hand to see how it all fit together. This is really what got me
hooked, that functional programming requires a
higher level of mathematical thinking with its emphasis on pure
functions and program-building via function
composition. This lead to other interesting rabbit holes such as
Arrows and Functional Reactive Programming
for UI programming, and Software Transactional Memory and parallel
data structures instead of threads for
concurrency. I have a real admiration for the Haskell guys to root out
state wherever they find it!
While I don't use a functional programming language in my day job, I
have found that certain patterns follow over,
such as side-effect free functions and immutability, which I feel has
made me a better programmer in the
imperative world. And so, for both intellectual curiosity and to help
me improve my game, I am very interested
in reading FP papers and having lively discussions!
See y'all later!
Duke
Sean Duckett
May 11, 2010, 10:36:15 AM5/11/10
to aust...@googlegroups.com
On 05/04/2010 06:23 PM, Sukant Hajra wrote:
> So I was wondering if we could use this thread to introduce ourselves. Maybe
> that way we don't have so much boilerplate to get out of the way when we do
> meet in person?
>
> I'll start, just to see if this is a good idea or not. And I'll try to keep
> this in context of the reading group.
>
> FP Formalism Expertise:
I have a BS in Computer Science and when I realized I needed a minor, I
> So I was wondering if we could use this thread to introduce ourselves. Maybe
> that way we don't have so much boilerplate to get out of the way when we do
> meet in person?
>
> I'll start, just to see if this is a good idea or not. And I'll try to keep
> this in context of the reading group.
>
> FP Formalism Expertise:
added more mathematics. While I tolerated my calculus classes, I loved
discrete math and my intro-formal math class (logic, set theory, proofs,
into to categories, etc). Unfortunately, I couldn't justify putting-off
graduation to take more classes, so it's books and self-teaching for now.
> Practical FP Programming Experience:
I'm pretty young on the practical side; while job hunting a few years
ago I started working through Project Euler problems in Haskell (which
pushed my back to the books), with a version of each in Python to see
the functional / procedural approaches side by side.
My interests are in Haskell and Clojure (Scala looks funny to me, so I
haven't explored it yet.)
I grok partial application and have the basic ideas of monoid, functors
and zippers, but the practical application of these concepts is thin and
fuzzy still.
> Interest for the reading group:
> - which leads me to Real World Haskell. I read the first half, which was
> largely a review of the Gentle Introduction to Haskell. . . so I haven't
> gotten to the "real world" part.
Same here. My real-world interests are in languages and visualizations;
> largely a review of the Gentle Introduction to Haskell. . . so I haven't
> gotten to the "real world" part.
DSLs, parsing and translating, exploring large data sets[1],
> - Peirce's Category Theory book if it's recommended (I don't have a copy
> yet).
it to my library.
--
Sean
[1] http://vis.renci.org/jeff/2009/01/16/beautiful-code-compelling-evidence/
Chance
May 11, 2010, 11:58:17 AM5/11/10
to Austin Functional Programmers
Thanks Sean and Duke for sending introductions. I am excited to hear
about some of the topics we have in common that might make for some
very interesting discussions in the future of the reading group. FRP,
Zippers and Visualization (bringing to mind some of Conal Elliot's
work) should make for some great meetings. So far I am hearing the
greatest interest in Odersky's paper for this Thursday. Any other
votes?
Thanks,
Chance
about some of the topics we have in common that might make for some
very interesting discussions in the future of the reading group. FRP,
Zippers and Visualization (bringing to mind some of Conal Elliot's
work) should make for some great meetings. So far I am hearing the
greatest interest in Odersky's paper for this Thursday. Any other
votes?
Thanks,
Chance
Sean Duckett
May 11, 2010, 12:36:43 PM5/11/10
to aust...@googlegroups.com
On 05/11/2010 10:58 AM, Chance wrote:
> So far I am hearing the greatest interest in Odersky's paper
> for this Thursday. Any other votes?
of the SEC wanting to mandate evaluatability by describing contracts in
Python.
(Certainly biased by my present employment.)
--
Sean
Sukant Hajra
May 11, 2010, 12:31:04 PM5/11/10
to aust...@googlegroups.com
Excerpts from Chance's message of Tue May 11 10:58:17 -0500 2010:
laptop (to complement Internet access). For instance, often papers have
ostensibly working code samples, but I'm not always diligent of coding up a
fully executable version.
So if we do the Odersky paper, I would be happy to code up the examples in a
Scala-plugin'd IntelliJ (I /think/ I have the time for that). Then we can
write tests to confirm behavior, and maybe compose a little new functionality
to prove out understanding. If what we have is good, we can post it to a SCM
repository like Google Code or GitHub.
Something else we could do on the projector is edit a wiki page with discussion
notes, but more importantly maintain a "parking lot" of open questions and
possible research avenues to answer those questions -- just to help organize
the group.
And it's nice to be able to as a group navigate web pages like Wikipedia, Math
World, etc.
None of this is obligatory. I've got access to a projector, easel, and a small
whiteboard to project on. I can try to have that all ready for the meetup,
just in case we have the itch. But I'm totally fine if the group would prefer
a more traditional reading group format.
-Sukant
>
> Thanks Sean and Duke for sending introductions. I am excited to hear about
> some of the topics we have in common that might make for some very
> interesting discussions in the future of the reading group. FRP, Zippers and
> Visualization (bringing to mind some of Conal Elliot's work) should make for
> some great meetings. So far I am hearing the greatest interest in Odersky's
> paper for this Thursday. Any other votes?
One thing I think is really useful for technical meetups is a projector and a
> Thanks Sean and Duke for sending introductions. I am excited to hear about
> some of the topics we have in common that might make for some very
> interesting discussions in the future of the reading group. FRP, Zippers and
> Visualization (bringing to mind some of Conal Elliot's work) should make for
> some great meetings. So far I am hearing the greatest interest in Odersky's
> paper for this Thursday. Any other votes?
laptop (to complement Internet access). For instance, often papers have
ostensibly working code samples, but I'm not always diligent of coding up a
fully executable version.
So if we do the Odersky paper, I would be happy to code up the examples in a
Scala-plugin'd IntelliJ (I /think/ I have the time for that). Then we can
write tests to confirm behavior, and maybe compose a little new functionality
to prove out understanding. If what we have is good, we can post it to a SCM
repository like Google Code or GitHub.
Something else we could do on the projector is edit a wiki page with discussion
notes, but more importantly maintain a "parking lot" of open questions and
possible research avenues to answer those questions -- just to help organize
the group.
And it's nice to be able to as a group navigate web pages like Wikipedia, Math
World, etc.
None of this is obligatory. I've got access to a projector, easel, and a small
whiteboard to project on. I can try to have that all ready for the meetup,
just in case we have the itch. But I'm totally fine if the group would prefer
a more traditional reading group format.
-Sukant
Donnie Jones
May 11, 2010, 1:07:47 PM5/11/10
to aust...@googlegroups.com
Hello,
I have a BS and MS in Computer Science Engineering from the University
of Kentucky.
I became intrigued by functional languages because of LISP in an
undergraduate programming languages course. I had been mostly
interested in Operating Systems research, but once I reached
grad-school I wanted to learn more about parallelism and started
researching languages well-suited for this. I found Haskell, and
again my interest in programming languages was sparked. I decided to
switch areas of research and do my Master's research in programming
languages. I was quite lucky to get in touch with Simon Marlow and
work on GHC to add parallel profiling support, which resulted in a
collaboration with Simon Marlow and Satnam Singh to create an event
logging library and ThreadScope.
Although, I have worked on GHC the development was for the run-time
system in C, so I am weak in some FP concepts such as Monads, Monad
Transformers. But, I quite enjoy Haskell and try to use it for any of
my personal projects and look forward to learning more and more.
I now work at NVIDIA in the compilers group as a Compiler Verification
Engineer. Not much FP at NVIDIA, but lots of programming languages
and compilers work.
My interests in this group are mostly programming languages and
compilers papers, not limited to FP. But, I would love to read any
other "famous" or impressive papers from other areas.
Thanks.
--
Donnie
I have a BS and MS in Computer Science Engineering from the University
of Kentucky.
I became intrigued by functional languages because of LISP in an
undergraduate programming languages course. I had been mostly
interested in Operating Systems research, but once I reached
grad-school I wanted to learn more about parallelism and started
researching languages well-suited for this. I found Haskell, and
again my interest in programming languages was sparked. I decided to
switch areas of research and do my Master's research in programming
languages. I was quite lucky to get in touch with Simon Marlow and
work on GHC to add parallel profiling support, which resulted in a
collaboration with Simon Marlow and Satnam Singh to create an event
logging library and ThreadScope.
Although, I have worked on GHC the development was for the run-time
system in C, so I am weak in some FP concepts such as Monads, Monad
Transformers. But, I quite enjoy Haskell and try to use it for any of
my personal projects and look forward to learning more and more.
I now work at NVIDIA in the compilers group as a Compiler Verification
Engineer. Not much FP at NVIDIA, but lots of programming languages
and compilers work.
My interests in this group are mostly programming languages and
compilers papers, not limited to FP. But, I would love to read any
other "famous" or impressive papers from other areas.
Thanks.
--
Donnie
cody koeninger
May 12, 2010, 12:20:01 PM5/12/10
to Austin Functional Programmers
Matt Brown at Blacklight mentioned to me today that Chance had said
something about our use of Scala at Giganews/Datafoundry, and that
yall were having meetings, so I'll try to stop by tomorrow.
> FP Formalism Expertise:
UT Plan II / UT Law, no formal CS education, entirely self taught.
I've read pierce's category theory book and TAPL, among other things
> Practical FP Programming Experience:
Been programming Scala at work for about half a year. Lisp for fun
since 2005ish, plenty of PerlEssentiallyResemblesLisp in between.
> Interest for the reading group:
Reading the turbak / gifford book lately (
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11656 ),
dunno if anyone else is interested in discussing chapters from actual
books (and large ones at that), but it's incredibly good.
something about our use of Scala at Giganews/Datafoundry, and that
yall were having meetings, so I'll try to stop by tomorrow.
> FP Formalism Expertise:
UT Plan II / UT Law, no formal CS education, entirely self taught.
I've read pierce's category theory book and TAPL, among other things
> Practical FP Programming Experience:
Been programming Scala at work for about half a year. Lisp for fun
since 2005ish, plenty of PerlEssentiallyResemblesLisp in between.
> Interest for the reading group:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11656 ),
dunno if anyone else is interested in discussing chapters from actual
books (and large ones at that), but it's incredibly good.
Chance
May 13, 2010, 3:08:09 AM5/13/10
to Austin Functional Programmers
Excellent, great to meet you Cody and thanks for the book pointer.
It's nice to see another team local to Austin making use of Scala.
I look forward to seeing you at the group discussion.
Regards,
Chance
It's nice to see another team local to Austin making use of Scala.
I look forward to seeing you at the group discussion.
Regards,
Chance
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