[Austin-FP] Possible reading for a reading group

[Sukant Hajra]

We're /at/ the Sunday 3PM meetup, and we've stumbled onto an old list of
articles that Ham Richards (retired UT prof) had up [1].

A lot of these papers are "classics" in the FP world, and Ham is here right now
so I think he might be motivated to upkeep the list.

Anyway, there's interest maybe starting a reading group on some nice papers.
Have a look, see what you like, and reply to the thread.

I'll let Chance follow up with more a out the meetup.

-Sukant

[1] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards/FP%20papers

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[Duke Banerjee]

I'd be very interested in this as well. I haven't read any academic
papers since college, and
I would like read something with more mathematical rigor. Which is why
I'm interested in
functional languages in the first place ;-)

Thanks,

Duke

[Sean Duckett]

There was a post [1] on the Haskell reddit yesterday about books, and
I've got Benjamin Pierce's _Basic Category Theory for Computer
Scientists_ [2] if anyone wants to borrow it (I won't be reading it just
yet.) I'm interested in perusing Chris Okasaki's [3] _Purely Functional
Data Structures_ as I have time

[1] http://programming-musings.org/2006/03/28/a-haskell-bookshelf/
[2] http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=7986
[3] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/theses/okasaki.pdf

--
Sean

[Sukant Hajra]

Excerpts from Sean Duckett's message of Tue May 04 11:42:36 -0500 2010:

>
> There was a post [1] on the Haskell reddit yesterday about books, and I've

> got Benjamin Pierce's _Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists_ if

> anyone wants to borrow it (I won't be reading it just yet.)

Has anyone read this? Is it good? Perhaps articles might make for better
reading for the group? Anyway, I'm totally intrigued by your offer and
interested in looking at the book. It will probably be my next read, right
after reading Wampler's Scala book that I'm currently reading.

-Sukant

[Matt Revelle]

In case people aren't familiar with Benjamin Pierce, he's spent a fair amount of time studying type systems and has written
several books on the topic, including "Types and Programming Languages".

I only skimmed his category theory book, but it's essentially an organized collection of notes. Seemed like a good reference.

I'd recommend watching some of these lectures, http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCatsters, and using the book to fill in the gaps.

-Matt

[Sukant Hajra]

Excerpts from Matt Revelle mrevelle-at-gmail.com |Austin Functional Programmers/mailing_lists|'s message of Tue May 04 12:13:49 -0500 2010:

>
> In case people aren't familiar with Benjamin Pierce, he's spent a fair amount
> of time studying type systems and has written several books on the topic,
> including "Types and Programming Languages".
>
> I only skimmed his category theory book, but it's essentially an organized
> collection of notes. Seemed like a good reference.
>
> I'd recommend watching some of these lectures,
> http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCatsters, and using the book to fill in the
> gaps.

Woah, those videos are awesome, but a bit cursory (there's a /lot/ of gaps to
fill in). I just started with Monads 1 and 2, and this is exactly what I
looking for when I tried to take some courses in the math department to
supplement my Haskell interests (ended up taking an algrebra course that was
interesting. . . but not quite what I was hoping for).

Thanks a lot.

I wonder what the best way to collect resources is. Maybe a wiki page? I
sometimes worry about exhaustive lists of every resource out there. Maybe
there's a way to organize some of this in a way that has more value than just
Googling?

[Donnie Jones]

Hello,

I would also be very interested in a reading group of academic papers.
I did this with some friends in grad-school and enjoyed it very much.
--
Donnie

[Chance]

Glad to hear there is so much interest. How would Thursday the 13th
be for an initial evening paper discussion? Looks like we have plenty
of material to choose from at this point.

As for BP's Cat Theory book, it would be interesting (a copy has been
collecting dust on my shelf for a while) but I would like to get a few
sessions in before stampeding on to such demanding topic. There are a
set of slides on the pointer Sukant sent out on cat theory that seem
like a more accessible start, if there is sufficient interest in that
topic : http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards/FP%20papers/cat101.pdf
However, it is geared more to ease of entry than depth.

BP's TAPL is a classic, and I recommend it for anyone who even thinks
about programming language design (and relevant to this group because
the examples are ML). I wouldn't hesitate to include chapters from
that book in the reading.

I still think, as starter material goes SPJ's "Composing Contracts"
work makes for fun reading :
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/financial-contracts/contracts-icfp.htm

Regards,
Chance

On May 4, 2:58 pm, Donnie Jones <don...@darthik.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would also be very interested in a reading group of academic papers.
>  I did this with some friends in grad-school and enjoyed it very much.
> --
> Donnie
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Sukant Hajra <w6fbrjf...@snkmail.com> wrote:
> > We're /at/ the Sunday 3PM meetup, and we've stumbled onto an old list of
> > articles that Ham Richards (retired UT prof) had up [1].
>
> > A lot of these papers are "classics" in the FP world, and Ham is here right now
> > so I think he might be motivated to upkeep the list.
>
> > Anyway, there's interest maybe starting a reading group on some nice papers.
> > Have a look, see what you like, and reply to the thread.
>
> > I'll let Chance follow up with more a out the meetup.
>
> > -Sukant
>
> > [1]http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards/FP%20papers
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Austin Functional Programmers" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to aust...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to austin-fp+...@googlegroups.com.

> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/austin-fp?hl=en.

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Austin Functional Programmers" group.
> To post to this group, send email to aust...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to austin-fp+...@googlegroups.com.

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/austin-fp?hl=en.

[Sean Duckett]

The 13th works for me. I only mentioned the Pierce book because I
noticed my bookmark was entirely too close to the front ;)

--
Sean

On 05/04/2010 04:48 PM, Chance wrote:
>
> Glad to hear there is so much interest. How would Thursday the 13th
> be for an initial evening paper discussion? Looks like we have plenty
> of material to choose from at this point.
>
> As for BP's Cat Theory book, it would be interesting (a copy has been
> collecting dust on my shelf for a while) but I would like to get a few
> sessions in before stampeding on to such demanding topic. There are a
> set of slides on the pointer Sukant sent out on cat theory that seem
> like a more accessible start, if there is sufficient interest in that
> topic : http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards/FP%20papers/cat101.pdf
> However, it is geared more to ease of entry than depth.
>
> BP's TAPL is a classic, and I recommend it for anyone who even thinks
> about programming language design (and relevant to this group because
> the examples are ML). I wouldn't hesitate to include chapters from
> that book in the reading.
>
> I still think, as starter material goes SPJ's "Composing Contracts"
> work makes for fun reading :
> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/financial-contracts/contracts-icfp.htm
>
> Regards,
> Chance

[Chance]

Great, that is one for the 13th - any other takers?

In the interest of full disclosure I have started the BP Cat Theory
book a number of times, but never gotten very far. :)

On May 4, 5:16 pm, Sean Duckett <sduck...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The 13th works for me.  I only mentioned the Pierce book because I
> noticed my bookmark was entirely too close to the front ;)
>
> --
> Sean
>
> On 05/04/2010 04:48 PM, Chance wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Glad to hear there is so much interest.  How would Thursday the 13th
> > be for an initial evening paper discussion?  Looks like we have plenty
> > of material to choose from at this point.
>
> > As for BP's Cat Theory book, it would be interesting (a copy has been
> > collecting dust on my shelf for a while) but I would like to get a few
> > sessions in before stampeding on to such demanding topic.  There are a
> > set of slides on the pointer Sukant sent out on cat theory that seem
> > like a more accessible start, if there is sufficient interest in that
> > topic :http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards/FP%20papers/cat101.pdf
> > However, it is geared more to ease of entry than depth.
>
> > BP's TAPL is a classic, and I recommend it for anyone who even thinks
> > about programming language design (and relevant to this group because
> > the examples are ML).  I wouldn't hesitate to include chapters from
> > that book in the reading.
>
> > I still think, as starter material goes SPJ's "Composing Contracts"
> > work makes for fun reading :

> >http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/financia...

[Sukant Hajra]

Excerpts from Sean Duckett sduckett-at-gmail.com |Austin Functional Programmers/mailing_lists|'s message of Tue May 04 17:16:19 -0500 2010:

>
> The 13th works for me. I only mentioned the Pierce book because I noticed my
> bookmark was entirely too close to the front ;)

I'm available too.

Do we think the first reading group meeting will be a mixer-style meeting with
an emphasis on figuring out:

- what's the spread of interest?

- what's the spread of expertise?

- logistics for managing a reading list backlog?

Or do you think we might actually have luck figuring things out on the list?

[Donnie Jones]

Hello Chance,

Thursday, May 13th would be a lunch meeting? Or what time?
--
Donnie

[Chance]

Hey Donnie, I think in order for Sean to make it the meeting would
need to start around COB. Thinking starting at 5:30 at a place where
we can talk easily around campus. Sean, how does that sound? Could
you make it to something like that Donnie?

Speaking of, we should go ahead and pick the first content for the
discussion. I am swamped today, but tomorrow or Sunday I will send
out a compilation of the pointers that have been shared so far, and we
can see if there is an obvious favorite. Please feel free to share
opinions in advance of that if you have one in mind.

Thanks,
Chance

On May 7, 11:47 am, Donnie Jones <don...@darthik.com> wrote:
> Hello Chance,
>
> Thursday, May 13th would be a lunch meeting?  Or what time?
> --
> Donnie
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Chance <cha...@austindatalab.com> wrote:
>
> > Glad to hear there is so much interest.  How would Thursday the 13th
> > be for an initial evening paper discussion?  Looks like we have plenty
> > of material to choose from at this point.
>
> > As for BP's Cat Theory book, it would be interesting (a copy has been
> > collecting dust on my shelf for a while) but I would like to get a few
> > sessions in before stampeding on to such demanding topic.  There are a
> > set of slides on the pointer Sukant sent out on cat theory that seem
> > like a more accessible start, if there is sufficient interest in that
> > topic :http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/richards/FP%20papers/cat101.pdf
> > However, it is geared more to ease of entry than depth.
>
> > BP's TAPL is a classic, and I recommend it for anyone who even thinks
> > about programming language design (and relevant to this group because
> > the examples are ML).  I wouldn't hesitate to include chapters from
> > that book in the reading.
>
> > I still think, as starter material goes SPJ's "Composing Contracts"
> > work makes for fun reading :

> >http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/financia...

[Sean Duckett]

5:30 Thursday around campus is fine for me.

On 05/07/2010 12:13 PM, Chance wrote:
> Hey Donnie, I think in order for Sean to make it the meeting would
> need to start around COB. Thinking starting at 5:30 at a place where
> we can talk easily around campus. Sean, how does that sound? Could
> you make it to something like that Donnie?

[Donnie Jones]

Hello Chance,

Yes, after work is best for me as I already have a lunch meeting on Thursdays.

Look forward to meeting. Thanks.
--
Donnie