Playing with Barbie Types & More

This month we'll be heading back to Habito for another round of food, drink and Haskell talks! Specifics are still being confirmed but it looks like we'll be repeating the format used last time and having two talks on a couple of topics.

Schedule:

6:30 -- Doors open; food, drink and chatter

7:00 -- Daniel Gorin, Habito: Playing with Barbie types -- Functor-parameterised types need not be awkward

Parameterising a data type over a functor is a well-known technique among Haskellers. However, despite the elegance of the idea, these types can be cumbersome to use in practice. In this talk, we'll take a tour of the `barbies` package, which provides a collection of types and classes that aim to make working with such types child's play.

7:30 -- Refreshment break

7:40 -- Will Jones, Habito: Free variables -- generics and thin-air type class instances

Since their arrival, GHC's generics have created rich opportunities for code generation and boilerplate removal. After starting this talk with a tour of how generics can be applied, I'll move on to show how their being underpinned by type classes means that we can apply several tricks---some familiar, some maybe not---to create progressively more powerful/abusive libraries and combinators.

8:10 -- Talks finish, some more chatter and networking

8:30 -- Wrap up and move to a local pub

Logistics:

We're based on the 5th floor of the Loom in 5.3 (South side). Habito people should be in the foyer to point in the right direction and the lifts will do the rest.