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Programming

Paul Hudak, Co-creator of Haskell, Has Died 138

Posted by timothy from the leaving-a-legacy dept.
Esther Schindler writes: Yale is reporting that Paul Hudak, professor of computer science and master of Saybrook College, died last night after a long battle with leukemia. He was known as one of the principal designers of Haskell, which you probably don't need to be told he defined as "a purely functional programming language."
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Paul Hudak, Co-creator of Haskell, Has Died More

Paul Hudak, Co-creator of Haskell, Has Died

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  • I remember him From Usenet as quite a gentleman (Score:4, Informative)

    by shoor ( 33382 ) on Thursday April 30, 2015 @02:10PM (#49588395)

    I posted on one of the Usenet groups (probably sci.lang.functional or sci.lang.haskell) about his book The Haskell School of Expression. It's been awhile, but I vaguely remember posting about a mistake or typo, and he replied right there on Usenet acknowledging the error. He was generally very generous and helpful on the newsgroup.

    • I posted on one of the Usenet groups (probably sci.lang.functional or sci.lang.haskell) about his book The Haskell School of Expression. It's been awhile, but I vaguely remember posting about a mistake or typo, and he replied right there on Usenet acknowledging the error. He was generally very generous and helpful on the newsgroup.

      A great "eulogy" (sorry for the Greek, i don't know the English word for when you say something nice about a deceased - the Greek is translated as "eu [nice] - logos [word]") - never really tried to understand Haskell, but that "eulogy" was a great expression of what is missing from many current projects/groups.

      • The English word for eulogy is eulogy.

        You have a nice word? English will rip it out of your hands.

        • The English word for eulogy is eulogy.

          BUT IT"S GREEK: "eu [nice] - logos [word]".

          You have a nice word?

          Well, being Greeks, yea, we may have some!

          English will rip it out of your hands.

          What? But it's not yours, it's ours. O.K., keep it, it makes barbaric (excuse me, i meant English...) easier for us.

          • O.K., keep it, it makes barbaric (excuse me, i meant English...) easier for us.

            That's not polite.

            • O.K., keep it, it makes barbaric (excuse me, i meant English...) easier for us.

              That's not polite.

              We Greeks were minding our own business (you know, making up the greatest words in the world), when suddenly... English and its gang (Latin, German. Slavic, etc) comes and steals from us one more word - well, excuse me if i am not so polite, i will try harder!

              • I thought I was making a joke in Greek, since polites is the antonym of barbaros. Did I do it wrong?

                • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                  by antiperimetaparalogo ( 4091871 )

                  I thought I was making a joke in Greek, since polites is the antonym of barbaros. Did I do it wrong?

                  No, you did it (almost*) right - i had to go with my first version, since your "pseudonym" (!) was a hint for me that you may understand it... but i was afraid that too much of the (in)famous Greek pride from a new Slashdot member like me (and some lack of Greek language understanding and Greek humor appreciation from the "barbarus" /. crowd) will send my (/.) "karma" back to "terrible" (from which i just recovered!)...

                  * "politis (singular) - polites (plural)" (meaning: 1. (Greek) citizen) is not a direct

                  • I logged in for the first time in weeks to post this:

                    Thank you. That was great. I don't have any mod points, but this was the most offtopic thread I've seen in a while. I'm still laughing a bit.

                    • I logged in for the first time in weeks to post this: Thank you. That was great. I don't have any mod points, but this was the most offtopic thread I've seen in a while. I'm still laughing a bit.

                      You are welcome my dear barbarus, and since in Greece we say "Greek is not a nationality, it is a profession"... i thank you for appreciating my professional skills!

                  • Thank you! I'm relieved that you got it without me having to explain it.

                    And it looks like some of hoi polloi(or should that be hoi barbaroi?) appreciated it too.

                    • Thank you! I'm relieved that you got it without me having to explain it.

                      Yes, i got it... it was good! But it was better to not continued from where you left it with my first version (the unpublished, self-censored), because it was going to be veeeryyy un-polite (!), in an "Aristophanic" way my fellow Slashdoter!

                      And it looks like some of hoi polloi(or should that be hoi barbaroi?) appreciated it too.

                      Hmmm... yes, i must have a little more confidence to my fellow Slashdoters, especially since it appears that some of them could be(come) fellow... Greeks!

                      Often (but not always) hoi polloi (even among only Greeks) end up to become barbaroi - i am glad that among (linguis

          • English will rip it out of your hands.

            What? But it's not yours, it's ours. O.K., keep it, it makes barbaric (excuse me, i meant English...) easier for us.

            James Nicoll put it best:

            The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

            • English will rip it out of your hands.

              What? But it's not yours, it's ours. O.K., keep it, it makes barbaric (excuse me, i meant English...) easier for us.

              James Nicoll put it best:

              The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

              Indeed, a great description of the "crime" from an native English speaker (and a writer/reviewer... i just researched about his work) - i will keep this quotation as a reference!

  • Now we finally know: Paul Hudak was born. (Score:5, Funny)

    by netsavior ( 627338 ) on Thursday April 30, 2015 @02:10PM (#49588399)
    (lazy evaluation)

  • As opposed to non-functional? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why would someone develop a language that didn't work?

    • You mean like J-Script and C#?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That was a good attempt at a joke if it weren't for the fact that using C# doesn't really make sense given that it's the most well designed OO language in heavy use today. C# is kind of the antithesis of a broken language in a world plagued by Javascript and PHP.

  • .... waiting to handle an event.

  • pandoc (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Bokma ( 834313 ) on Thursday April 30, 2015 @03:05PM (#49588827) Homepage
    For those who never heard of Haskell and are looking for an example project written using this language check out Pandoc: http://pandoc.org/ [pandoc.org]. Other examples are Darcs (version control) and xmonad (tiling window manager).

  • I was taught Miranda (precursor to Haskell) some twenty years ago in my undergraduate degree. To this day I use still functional programming (Haskell) to prototype any reasonably complex algorithm.

    To give you an idea of how compact functional programming languages can express complex algorithms - here's quicksort:
    qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter ( x) xs)

    Couple high level functions with closure gives us a very powerful tool to express complex algorithms.

    • Hello, that doesnâ(TM)t seem right. [code] qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (=x) xs) qsort [] = [] [/code] This performs better: [code] qsort (x:xs) = qsort ls ++ [x] ++ qsort rs where (ls,rs) = foldl f ([],[]) xs f (ls',rs') (x':xs') | x' x = ((x':ls'),rs') | otherwise = (ls',(x':rs')) [/code] Excuses if the code does not compile or run. I am on a mobile device and havenâ(TM)t attempted to compile it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by xenog ( 3653043 )

        I’m sorry, that was horrible. Let me try again.

        The QuickSort code published by the commenter to whom I replied was incomplete. Here is the correct code: http://lpaste.net/131815 [lpaste.net]. Here is also an alternative implementation that performs better, since it does not do two list traversals per sorting operation: http://lpaste.net/131814 [lpaste.net]. Note: The problem with the code in the original comment that I was replying to is due to the way that Slashdot parsed it.

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