tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post9135612148341174249..comments2024-03-23T14:36:09.980+00:00Comments on Neil Mitchell's Blog (Haskell etc): Experience Report: Functional Programming through Deep TimeNeil Mitchellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13084722756124486154noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-34227997040609961392011-03-22T14:13:28.744+00:002011-03-22T14:13:28.744+00:00This was an enjoyable read. One small point -- if ...This was an enjoyable read. One small point -- if possible, it would be very nice if the code was made available on some website (with appropriate caveats about being in development, etc.) or if the paper stated plans in that direction. Whether or not this is done, it would be nice to name the program just so it doesn't have to be referred to throughout the paper as "my program".<br /><br />Also, in 2nd para, 2nd col, 1st page, you write "I perform Baysian.." which I think should be "To perform"sclvnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-79438395856284895202011-03-21T21:35:42.930+00:002011-03-21T21:35:42.930+00:00Heinrich: Thanks for the comment, I will clarify w...Heinrich: Thanks for the comment, I will clarify where I am talking about the libraries vs the language. A plot function would be great :)<br /><br />Ketil: A good statistics library would be a start, but R has thousands of different libraries, it would take a while to catch up!<br /><br />Colin: Typo fixed, thanks :) Nice to hear someone else has similar problems.<br /><br />Vinod: I used a few higher order functions in R, but without types they are much harder to get right - I am just spoilt by the ease of Haskell's higher order functions.<br /><br />Thanks for all the comments, they are very much appreciated. EmilyUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03822717627711331943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-3411139256472138452011-03-21T18:59:02.432+00:002011-03-21T18:59:02.432+00:00I use R a lot, mostly for graphing, data analysis ...I use R a lot, mostly for graphing, data analysis and performance visualization of the compilers I work on. <br /><br />I am also very interested in functional languages and programming languages in general. <br /><br />Recently I was pleasantly shocked to discover that R supports higher order functions (or at least closures)!<br /><br />e.g. one can write the following fragment in R:<br /><br />> closure <- function(a) { return (function(c) {return (a+c)})}<br />> tmp <- closure(21)<br />> tmp(45)<br />[1] 66Vinod Ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14188995905301553441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-50126430881287171142011-03-21T14:41:33.279+00:002011-03-21T14:41:33.279+00:00Emily, I found your points of comparison between H...Emily, I found your points of comparison between Haskell and R spot on.<br /><br />Last year, I had the task of writing an Eiffel (the language we use at work - I use Haskell at home, when I am doing any programming, though that has been over a year now) class to do logisitic regression. Not knowing anything about the technique, I decided to convert an R package to Eiffel.<br /><br />But I found all the automatic coercions made R impossible to read. In the end, I had to step through every stage in the debugger, to inspect the arguments that were actually being passed, to see what shape they were. Only that way was I able to understand he program!<br /><br />P.S. At one point in your program you mention Strict Types. I suspect this is a typo for Static Types.Colinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09240704815981280608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-2170555409330314702011-03-21T10:11:15.117+00:002011-03-21T10:11:15.117+00:00What he (Heinrich) said.
Although I only have a l...What he (Heinrich) said.<br /><br />Although I only have a little experience with R, the functional aspects of it appeals to me, but I found myself wishing it was a bit more like Haskell.<br /><br />I think that with a good library, Haskell would make a great statistics environment, especially for more programming-oriented folks.Ketilhttp://blog.malde.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-50449108647202721482011-03-21T09:04:28.171+00:002011-03-21T09:04:28.171+00:00I was somewhat confused by the statement "sta...I was somewhat confused by the statement "statistical analysis in Haskell is overly burdensome" because strictly speaking, that is a property of the available libraries, not of the language proper. Indeed, Emily is thinking about writing her own libraries at the end of the paper. I understand where the notion comes from, but perhaps a small change in wording might make it clearer.<br /><br />In that light, Emily offers an interesting design suggestion for a plotting library: offer one function, called <i>plot</i>, which tries to guess everything and does a reasonable plot of the data. Additional options or functions can be used for customization, but the rapid experimentation made possible by a dead-simple <i>plot</i> function is extremely valuable.Heinrich Apfelmushttp://apfelmus.nfshost.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7094652.post-36515100976356192122011-03-20T23:21:28.932+00:002011-03-20T23:21:28.932+00:00I look forward to hearing any comments.
Many than...I look forward to hearing any comments.<br /><br />Many thanks, EmilyUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03822717627711331943noreply@blogger.com