[Caml-list] The OCaml Summer Project
Yaron M. Minsky
at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding students over
the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml. At the end of the
summer, we will fly all of the students who have completed their
projects succesfully out for a meeting in New York, where people will
present their projects and get a chance to shmooze with other members of
the OCaml community.
The project is being funded and run by Jane Street Capital. As people on
the list likely know at this point, we make extensive use of OCaml here
at Jane Street, and are excited about the idea of encouraging and
growing the OCaml community.
If you'd like to learn more about the project, you can look at our
website here:
http://osp2007.janestcapital.com
We'd love to have professors tell their students about the project,
since we hope it will do some real good in terms of increasing interest
in functional programming.
Please direct any questions or suggestions you have to
o...@janestcapital.com.
y
(p.s., we had a few DNS problems over the last day or so, so if you have
trouble reaching the site, it should get resolved when caches expire
later today.)
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Yaron M. Minsky
functioning at all until about 10 minutes ago, and all messages sent to
it have been silently eaten by our spam-filter. I apologize. Emails
should go through now.
y
Nathaniel Gray
> > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is aimed
> > at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding students over
> > the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on. Will students
have advisors for their projects? I have a few ideas for projects and
it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.
Cheers,
-n8
--
>>>-- Nathaniel Gray -- Caltech Computer Science ------>
>>>-- Mojave Project -- http://mojave.cs.caltech.edu -->
Gabriel Kerneis
a écrit :
> > Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is
> > > aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding
> > > students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
>
> Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on. Will students
> have advisors for their projects? I have a few ideas for projects and
> it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.
And I'm an interested student looking for ideas (the binary trees
project on the OCSP page seems fine but I'd be glad to have more
ideas) ;-)
Other questions :
- is it possible to propose several projects (per student) and let
the OCSP team decide which one is the better ?
- (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
France) - but i guess i can find this on the Internet - and to what
extent will you pay the flight/food/housing/etc. fees ?
Sincerely,
--
Gabriel Kerneis
Yaron Minsky
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yaron Minsky <ymi...@cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Jan 25, 2007 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project
To: Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel...@enst.fr>
On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel...@enst.fr> wrote:
>
> Le Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:29:40 -0800, "Nathaniel Gray" <n8g...@gmail.com>
> a écrit :
> > > Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > > > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is
> > > > aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding
> > > > students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
> >
> > Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on. Will students
> > have advisors for their projects? I have a few ideas for projects and
> > it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.
>
> And I'm an interested student looking for ideas (the binary trees
> project on the OCSP page seems fine but I'd be glad to have more
> ideas) ;-)
> Other questions :
> - is it possible to propose several projects (per student) and let
> the OCSP team decide which one is the better ?
Just one proposal per student, I'm afraid. We'd rather you chose a project
you liked and believed in, and come up with the best proposal you can fo
rit.
- (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
> France) - but i guess i can find this on the Internet - and to what
> extent will you pay the flight/food/housing/etc. fees ?
We will pay for the travel and your stay. I don't expect we'll pay for all
of your meals, but we'll have a few dinners for the group. As for the visa
issue, my expectation is that students will figure this out on their own. I
suspect that for the most part I believe a tourist visa should do, but I
don't really know the details, and it will no doubt vary from country to
country.
Sincerely,
> --
> Gabriel Kerneis
Yaron Minsky
From: Yaron Minsky <ymi...@cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Jan 25, 2007 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project
To: Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel...@enst.fr>
On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel...@enst.fr> wrote:
>
> Le Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:29:40 -0800, "Nathaniel Gray" <n8g...@gmail.com>
> a écrit :
> > > Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > > > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is
> > > > aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding
> > > > students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
> >
> > Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on. Will students
> > have advisors for their projects? I have a few ideas for projects and
> > it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.
>
> And I'm an interested student looking for ideas (the binary trees
> project on the OCSP page seems fine but I'd be glad to have more
> ideas) ;-)
> Other questions :
> - is it possible to propose several projects (per student) and let
> the OCSP team decide which one is the better ?
Just one proposal per student, I'm afraid. We'd rather you chose a project
you liked and believed in, and come up with the best proposal you can fo
rit.
- (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
> France) - but i guess i can find this on the Internet - and to what
> extent will you pay the flight/food/housing/etc. fees ?
We will pay for the travel and your stay. I don't expect we'll pay for all
of your meals, but we'll have a few dinners for the group. As for the visa
issue, my expectation is that students will figure this out on their own. I
suspect that for the most part I believe a tourist visa should do, but I
don't really know the details, and it will no doubt vary from country to
country.
Sincerely,
> --
> Gabriel Kerneis
>
>
>
Markus Mottl
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
> France)
Most "older" EU-countries (this is definitely true for France) qualify for
the Visa waiver program. This means if you are e.g. a French citizen, you
only need a valid passport to stay up to 90 days in the US. You can find
more info on this page:
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html
Regards,
Markus
--
Markus Mottl http://www.ocaml.info markus...@gmail.com
Dário Abdulrehman
Yesterday when I checked the suggested projects page there was a machine
learning framework project, which apparently was removed.
Did you give up on this one?
Thanks
Jon Harrop
> I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project.
Sounds like an excellent idea and the projects all look fascinating. However,
I do have some comments on the "Binary tree library" project:
OCaml currently has two separate implementations of AVL trees in Map and Set
functors. Set already has fast union and split operations.
Having two separate implementations is wasteful but more efficient. The
underlying tree code could be factored out into another functor but this is
costly in terms of performance. Also, the OCaml stdlib has used an odd choice
of optimisations: inlining height calculation (which is quite a small benefit
in the context of functors and polymorphism) but not amortising single-child
trees into a separate constructor (which can remove up to 50% of the GC's
effort). So the code can be made shorter and faster.
I've already implemented my own AVL set using the node-specialisation trick.
Performance is ~30% faster, IIRC. I've also wanted to write a functional
array based on AVL trees (O(log n) lookup but fast sub, append, insert,
delete etc.) and a camlp4 extension to support pattern matching over this
type. Lists and arrays are rather priviledged containers in OCaml, having
pattern matching and literals, but trees are better in many respects and
would make an excellent general-purpose container.
Finally, having to use functors does obfuscate OCaml code that deal with Sets
and Maps in many cases, particularly because there are no built-in Int and
Float modules so you must write your own. I often find that this superfluous
code is as long as all of the code using the Sets/Maps. Although it would
be "dangerous", Sets and Maps implemented without functors are much easier to
use. After all, Hashtbl is typically used in that way.
It is also worth noting that several people (Diego, Jean-Christophe) have
written other tree libraries using various data structures (RB, trie, splay
etc.). As far as I can tell, AVL trees are a good all-rounder.
Best of luck with the projects!
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists
Gerd Stolpmann
> On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel...@enst.fr> wrote:
> - (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living
> in
> France)
>
> Most "older" EU-countries (this is definitely true for France) qualify
> for the Visa waiver program. This means if you are e.g. a French
> citizen, you only need a valid passport to stay up to 90 days in the
> US.
This is not true. The US are picky about which passports they accept.
You need a passport of the newest generation (with biometrics features)
- older ones, although being valid, are not accepted.
Gerd
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany
ge...@gerd-stolpmann.de http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
Phone: +49-6151-153855 Fax: +49-6151-997714
------------------------------------------------------------
Markus Mottl
>
> Am Donnerstag, den 25.01.2007, 23:43 -0500 schrieb Markus Mottl:
> > Most "older" EU-countries (this is definitely true for France) qualify
> > for the Visa waiver program. This means if you are e.g. a French
> > citizen, you only need a valid passport to stay up to 90 days in the
> > US.
>
> This is not true. The US are picky about which passports they accept.
> You need a passport of the newest generation (with biometrics features)
> - older ones, although being valid, are not accepted.
>
This is not quite true. Only newer passports (younger than 26 October 2006)
have to be biometric. The link to the government page in my previous mail
details the different passport requirements depending on the date they were
issued. I'll put an entry concerning travel requirements into the FAQ.
Please mail me without CCing the list if there is more to discuss on travel
requirements.
Xavier Leroy
> at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding students over
> the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
I just wanted to say a big "thank you" to you and the Jane Street
Capital people for donating the time and money to organize such an
event. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of it.
My attempt to put the visa discussion at rest. I believe Yaron and
Markus are right: a tourist visa (or visa waiver program) is
probably enough; whether you need an actual visa or not is a
complicated function of your country of citizenship and of the date
your passport was issued, but for citizens of "old Europe", this
function returns "no visa needed" with high probability.
For more details, see the Web sites of the ministry of foreign affairs
or of the US consulate in your country (URLs for France included below
for your convenience).
Let me add that if you never visited Manhattan before, it's well worth
the trip. One more reason to participate in this project!
Cheers,
- Xavier Leroy
http://www.amb-usa.fr/consul/niv/needvisa/default.htm
shaneal
I was wondering if there was a specific newsgroup/forum/channel that
OCaml summer project hopefuls were hanging out in? I just submitted
my proposal yesterday, and was looking for a place to talk to some
smart people about their proposed implementations/ideas. My own
proposal was for the equation solver (I've always been a math guy at
heart), but the binary tree library also sounds really fun and
visualization tools sound useful (not my forte though).
If some people are interested, and there isn't already a meeting area
i don't know about, I can set up a quick wiki/phpBB somewhere.
Thanks