Re: A Philly Lambda Project

["Kyle R. Burton" <kyle.burton@gmail.com>]

>  On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Aaron Feng <aaron.feng@gmail.com> wrote:
>  > > This sounds fun.  But I would rather build something I (and other
>  > > people) can actually use.
>  >
>  > Do you have anything in mind?

That's a great question! ;)

>  I've found that starting a project is difficult because it requires
>  uniting a group of people, having them all believe in a single idea.
>
>  However, this group is already united around the idea of functional
>  programming.  Is it not?  So why not start a project that we all can
>  work on to learn fp?  I've always said that the best way to learn
>  functional programming (or anything for that matter) is to simply do
>  it.  That's how I learned.  If we had a project -- a goal -- real and
>  useful scenarios would come up, and we could all learn from each other
>  how to deal with them in the functional style.
>
>  But at the same time, if our efforts were focused, we could build
>  something  no single one of us could build alone, and come out on the
>  other side with a major accomplishment.
>
>  "The gods lift those who lift each other."
>
>  So basically, what I'm saying is, the specifics of the project
>  shouldn't matter as long as they're conducive to functional
>  programming, assuming that learning is our actual goal.

Hrm...not really answered... ;)

>  Who's with me?

What do you have in mind?  Anything more concrete than 'something useful'?

I'm sure several people will be interested, but you need a concrete
"we're doing to do X!" where X is something like:

 - haskell (or other FPL) IDE extensions, debugger, profiler, coverage
    analysis, completion, documentation integration
   - Eclipse plugin? (like CUSP); Emacs extensions?  Something else?
 - code anlaysis tools: a duplication tool? for analyzing java
codebases for code 'shape' (a step
   beyond cut and paste)
 - a suped up classifier library (polychotomous classifier) for
documents (web pages)
   which learns from your del.icio.us bookmarks to build a model, plus
a FF plugin
   that shows you the tags you would use for new pages you visit?
 - yet another todo list application (dontforgetthemilk)
 - as a way to get people's feet wet, with concrete experience, the
ICFP contest? *ducks*

Kyle