semantic/weekly/2016-05-31.md

May 31th, 2016

NB: On Tuesday this week since Monday was Memorial Day.

Agenda

1. Retrospective on last week:
   • What went well?
   • What was challenging?
   • What did you learn?

What went well?

@joshvera:

• Diff summaries merged.
• Introduced a new prelude.
• Pairing with Rick.
• Alignment!

@rewinfrey:

• Pairing with Josh.
• Was at MoonConf and enjoyed the conference.
• Almost finished with Haskell Tic Tac Toe.

@robrix:

• Alignment resolved!
• Getting diff summaries merged.

What was challenging?

@joshvera:

• Didn't make as much progress on the structure of diff summaries as desired.

@rewinfrey:

• Continuing to adjust to the project.
• Hit an edge case in Minimax that is tricky.

@robrix:

• Not sure why the line approach in alignment solved the problem.
• In stack 1.1 you cannot rely on it rebuilding internal packages (must clean and rebuild semantic diff tool)

What did you learn?

@joshvera:

• Learned about the different types of preludes.
• Learned about an extension in GHC 8.0 that introduces Applicative Do syntax, but is tricky to use in parallel computations because of the order of executation.

@rewinfrey:

• Learned about different recursion schemes (zygotmorphism
• The transition from thinking about function application to thinking about function composition was an eye-opener.
• Understanding a lot more about why certain shapes are advantageous.
• http://livestream.com/accounts/16500216/events/5467460 (first video)
  • Greg Pfeil's talk: 02:24 Recursion Where FP Hits Bottom
  • Amar Shah's talk: 04:24 Point Free or Die
  • Ashley Powell's talk: 05:57 Negotiating Salary for Women in Tech
  • Patrick Thomson's talk: 06:25 Bracer: Transforming Real-World Languages with Coproducts and Recursion Schemes

@robrix:

• Learned a lot about GHCi debugging.
• Remembered to question assumptions, specifically about alignment property tests that were throwing results off.
• Using Arbitrary for purposes other than QuickCheck.

Other Items

@robrix:

• Planning this week about the timeline for staffshipping diff summaries.
• Planning for a possible mini-summit in late June.