[pdxfunc] Survey for future presentation and discussion topics

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Igal Koshevoy

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Apr 28, 2010, 2:37:07 AM4/28/10
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We'd like to get a better idea of what members of the Portland
Functional Study Group are interested in hearing about at future
meetings. We brainstormed a bunch of topics at the last meeting, which
we'd like to have your feedback on. Although lengthy, this list isn't
exhaustive and we'd still be glad to accept talks on other topics.
This survey should take you less than 5 minutes to complete.

The survey:
http://tinyurl.com/pdxfunc-topics

Thanks for participating!

-igal

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John Melesky

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Apr 28, 2010, 11:17:17 AM4/28/10
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On 2010-04-27, at 11:37 PM, Igal Koshevoy wrote:
> We'd like to get a better idea of what members of the Portland
> Functional Study Group are interested in hearing about at future
> meetings.

Thanks for putting this together, Igal.

-johnnnnn

Max Strini

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Apr 28, 2010, 4:04:19 PM4/28/10
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More in "my selfish interests" category -- have we looked at ATS at all?

Max Strini

Clint Moore

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Apr 28, 2010, 4:14:39 PM4/28/10
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On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Igal Koshevoy <ig...@pragmaticraft.com> wrote:
> We'd like to get a better idea of ...
>
> The survey:
> http://tinyurl.com/pdxfunc-topics


"How Conal is killing FRP." - I'm assuming this is a joke? I ask
mainly because I've been reading a lot of his info on the subject, and
I can't help but like the guy to the extent that I can having never
talked to or met him.

Phil Tomson

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Apr 28, 2010, 4:24:04 PM4/28/10
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On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Clint Moore <cod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Igal Koshevoy <ig...@pragmaticraft.com> wrote:
>> We'd like to get a better idea of ...
>>
>> The survey:
>> http://tinyurl.com/pdxfunc-topics
>
>
> "How Conal is killing FRP." - I'm assuming this is a joke? I ask
> mainly because I've been reading a lot of his info on the subject, and
> I can't help but like the guy to the extent that I can having never
> talked to or met him.
>

I read the survey question at first as "How Conal is killing FP" (and
wondered how Conal was killing functional programming?) But it's FRP
- Functional Reactive Programming. Conal has suggested alternatives
to FRP. I don't pretend to understand all the details, though.

Are there opinions here about whether or not killing FRP is a good thing?

Phil

Igal Koshevoy

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Apr 28, 2010, 4:37:58 PM4/28/10
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On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Max Strini <mcst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> More in "my selfish interests" category -- have we looked at ATS at all?

ATS, as in http://ats-lang.sourceforge.net/ ?

I don't recall it being mentioned before. It seems intriguing. I'd be
glad if you explored it and reported back on what you learn to the
group.

Julian Blake Kongslie

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Apr 28, 2010, 4:46:34 PM4/28/10
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On Wed, 2010-04-28 at 13:24 -0700, Phil Tomson wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Clint Moore <cod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > "How Conal is killing FRP." - I'm assuming this is a joke? I ask
> > mainly because I've been reading a lot of his info on the subject, and
> > I can't help but like the guy to the extent that I can having never
> > talked to or met him.
>
> I read the survey question at first as "How Conal is killing FP" (and
> wondered how Conal was killing functional programming?) But it's FRP
> - Functional Reactive Programming. Conal has suggested alternatives
> to FRP. I don't pretend to understand all the details, though.

It is FRP, not FP, and it is at least partly joking; FRP is in a lot of
ways one of those seems-like-a-great-idea-until-you-try-to-write-it
methods of programming, and Conal is doing a lot of work exploring the
bounds and techniques behind a solid implementation, much of which is
heading in the direction of not really doing FRP so much as just finding
reliable ways of programming functionally while still being able to
reason about time and space complexities.

> Are there opinions here about whether or not killing FRP is a good thing?

I'd certainly *rather* see better tools for complexity analysis of
general functional programming, like many academics. FRP at the moment
is sort of divided into two unfortunate cases: first, the "old" FRP
implementations that use lots of Arrows/Monads to constrain evaluation
and consequently have reasonable time/space behaviour but don't look
like functional programming; second, the "new" FRP implementations that
try to use pure functions but tend to have occasional time/space
explosions, especially if the programmer does not completely understand
the mechanisms being employed. Arguably neither of these is the right
thing.

> Phil

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Jeremy Voorhis

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Apr 28, 2010, 5:15:31 PM4/28/10
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On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Clint Moore <cod...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Igal Koshevoy <ig...@pragmaticraft.com> wrote:
> We'd like to get a better idea of ...
>
> The survey:
>    http://tinyurl.com/pdxfunc-topics


"How Conal is killing FRP."  - I'm assuming this is a joke?  I ask
mainly because I've been reading a lot of his info on the subject, and
I can't help but like the guy to the extent that I can having never
talked to or met him.

Indeed. Can somebody take ownership of this remark and explain what they mean? Otherwise, this sounds to me like unhelpful trolling.

Jeremy
 
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Julian Blake Kongslie

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Apr 28, 2010, 5:30:42 PM4/28/10
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On Wed, 2010-04-28 at 14:15 -0700, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> Indeed. Can somebody take ownership of this remark and explain what
> they mean? Otherwise, this sounds to me like unhelpful trolling.

I don't remember if I was the one who actually said those words, but it
was certainly in response to one of my talk ideas, so I'll take
ownership of the remark.

I've posted a brief explanation of the context in message-id
<1272487594....@lizhou.omgwallhack.org>, which is at
<http://groups.google.com/group/pdxfunc/msg/0031bc7ad3f084f2>.

> Jeremy

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John Melesky

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Apr 28, 2010, 5:31:11 PM4/28/10
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On 2010-04-28, at 2:15 PM, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Clint Moore <cod...@gmail.com> wrote:
"How Conal is killing FRP."  - I'm assuming this is a joke?  I ask
mainly because I've been reading a lot of his info on the subject, and
I can't help but like the guy to the extent that I can having never
talked to or met him.

Indeed. Can somebody take ownership of this remark and explain what they mean? Otherwise, this sounds to me like unhelpful trolling.

I'll claim ownership if nobody else does, as i was the one writing suggestions up on the board, and would occasionally "enhance" them. That said, what i wrote down was not extremely far from what was said.

iirc, the spirit of it was 1- Conal was one of the highest-profile, driving forces behind FRP, but 2- Conal's more recent efforts were hurt by some of his other coding opinions (possibly anti-monadism? i don't recall specifically). Since he's the face of FRP, if his bias makes FRP harder, it hurts FRP.

-johnnnnn

contextfree

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Apr 28, 2010, 5:40:43 PM4/28/10
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my memory is:

1) I expressed a vague interest in FRP as a potential discussion topic
2) Julian gave his assessment of the current state of FRP research/
implementation
3) The line item you see is John's tongue-in-cheek characterization of
Julian's assessment, which elicited chuckles at the time.

Maybe you had to be there ...

Max Strini

On Apr 28, 2:15 pm, Jeremy Voorhis <jvoor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Clint Moore <code...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Igal Koshevoy <i...@pragmaticraft.com>
> > wrote:
> > > We'd like to get a better idea of ...
>
> > > The survey:
> > >    http://tinyurl.com/pdxfunc-topics
>
> > "How Conal is killing FRP."  - I'm assuming this is a joke?  I ask
> > mainly because I've been reading a lot of his info on the subject, and
> > I can't help but like the guy to the extent that I can having never
> > talked to or met him.
>
> Indeed. Can somebody take ownership of this remark and explain what they
> mean? Otherwise, this sounds to me like unhelpful trolling.
>
> Jeremy
>
> > --
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>
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Jeremy Voorhis

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Apr 28, 2010, 7:30:21 PM4/28/10
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On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Julian Blake Kongslie <jbl...@omgwallhack.org> wrote:
On Wed, 2010-04-28 at 14:15 -0700, Jeremy Voorhis wrote:
> Indeed. Can somebody take ownership of this remark and explain what
> they mean? Otherwise, this sounds to me like unhelpful trolling.

I don't remember if I was the one who actually said those words, but it
was certainly in response to one of my talk ideas, so I'll take
ownership of the remark.

I've posted a brief explanation of the context in message-id
<1272487594....@lizhou.omgwallhack.org>, which is at
<http://groups.google.com/group/pdxfunc/msg/0031bc7ad3f084f2>.

Thanks for pointing me to that. I would have drawn the line between the two camps differently, but in either case it underscores the fragmentation and duplication of effort between the two. Adding to the confusion, there are also projects like FrTime with completely different semantics, and offshoots like Functional Hybrid Modeling that are similar but tangential. None of them seem extremely easy to get started with. Sounds like a promising talk, but I would choose a less polemic title.

Best,

Jeremy

> Jeremy

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Conal

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May 1, 2010, 3:00:52 PM5/1/10
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Hi All,

Jeremy pointed me to this thread.

On "How Conal is killing FRP", I enjoy a provocative talk title, and I
have no problem with this one. I'm flattered.

On Apr 28, 2:31 pm, John Melesky <l...@phaedrusdeinus.org> wrote:

> iirc, the spirit of [the suggested title] was 1- Conal was one of the highest-profile, driving forces behind FRP, but 2- Conal's more recent efforts were hurt by some of his other coding opinions (possibly anti-monadism? i don't recall specifically). Since he's the face of FRP, if his bias makes FRP harder, it hurts FRP.

Many of my best friends are monads, so my preferences might not be
what you think, or your impressions might not be what I think.

If anyone has questions about FRP, denotational design, Monad, etc,
I'm happy to try answering.

Sounds like you folks have some great functional energy there in
Portland!

Regards, - Conal

Igal Koshevoy

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May 3, 2010, 2:55:36 AM5/3/10
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On 05/01/2010 12:00 PM, Conal wrote:
> If anyone has questions about FRP, denotational design, Monad, etc,
> I'm happy to try answering.
So, anyone want to take Conal up on his generous offer?

I think this could be a great discussion.

-igal

Andrew Brookins

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May 3, 2010, 10:34:39 AM5/3/10
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On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Igal Koshevoy <ig...@pragmaticraft.com> wrote:
> We'd like to get a better idea of what members of the Portland
> Functional Study Group are interested in hearing about at future
> meetings. We brainstormed a bunch of topics at the last meeting, which
> we'd like to have your feedback on. Although lengthy, this list isn't
> exhaustive and we'd still be glad to accept talks on other topics.
> This survey should take you less than 5 minutes to complete.
>
> The survey:
>    http://tinyurl.com/pdxfunc-topics
>
> Thanks for participating!
>
> -igal

Hello,

I looked over this survey but could not find any mention of Clojure,
which I am studying. Is Clojure more Java-related than functional, in
a community sense? Do any of you use it?

Best,
Andrew

Howard Lewis Ship

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May 3, 2010, 12:24:03 PM5/3/10
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I used it ... I've talked about it in the past at PDXFunc. It has
great Java interop, but it's all about functional and concurrent
programming.

The current efforts in Clojure are about bootstrapping Clojure into a
cross-platform development environment; long term,it should be
possible to run Clojure on Java but compile the Clojure code for other
platforms (Last year, Rich specifically mentioned iPhone, though
Apple's latest license would forbid that).
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(971) 678-5210
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Andrew Brookins

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May 3, 2010, 10:01:28 PM5/3/10
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I've been reading about it, coding up some breakable toys with it,
watching Rich's lectures, reading the mailing list.

I guess because this is my first functional language, it's kind of
blowing my mind. Mostly the language's representations of time, state
and identity. I haven't been exposed to this view of computing in C,
PHP and Ruby.

The idea that a thing's value should be immutable, but that
collections of values causally related form identity ("the future is a
function of the past") is mind-blowing. Is this kind of stuff what
functional programming is all about? Are Haskell and other FP
languages interesting (to you, and maybe others?) because of these
kinds of reasons -- which I would say are about correctness in terms
of reality, not only computing?
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