BFPG Monthly Meetup

Type Providers in F#

Type Providers are a feature that is unique to F#. They fundamentally expand on the idea of a type system, and allow for dynamic types to be generated at compile time, and statically verified before compilation is complete. These types can be used to provide data to the application from remote sources, and make "Intellisense" a tool for exploring datasets. Computational biology is a sector that generates a huge amount of data, with limited options for exploration. Using a type provider to enable quick exploration, as well as type safety when processing, could help researchers work faster and more efficiently.

• A brief introduction to type providers
• A look at a couple of the common type providers (JSON, CSV, SQL)
• A look at a new type provider for bioinformatic data, pulling from Genbank.

Real World Haskell: A TUI e-mail client

There is a myriad of free software e-mail clients to choose from. However only few support a text user interface and fast indexing.

• Quick introduction to brick and how to build text user interfaces
• How do we extensively test purebred?
• What have we done to leverage Haskell to build a better client than what is available today?
• What have we learned so far?