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The Glasgow Haskell Compiler supports extraordinarily cheap threads, about as lightweight as those of Erlang. These are implemented using a two-level model, with threads scheduled across a set of OS-level threads. Since the lightweight threads can't afford to block when performing I/O operations, when a Haskell program starts, it runs an I/O manager thread whose [...]

Earlier this evening, I released a new version of the Haskell text package. This one adds support for I/O, which in previous releases you had to roll by hand. The Data.Text.IO and Data.Text.Lazy.IO modules are the places you'll want to look for details of how to read and write text easily.

The reason for this timing [...]

I spent some time recently using my criterion benchmark suite to measure the performance of the Haskell text package. I've reproduced the 45 microbenchmarks that I've put together so far below.

The attention deficit summary

The performance of the text package is generally good, and there are some obvious areas for improvement. In many cases, simply waiting for [...]

…if the world of blogging about software had by now developed some kind of a tradition of critical analysis? Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee writes a careful and thoughtful review of Cornel West’s new book. It performs the delicate feat of being at once both generous to its subject and devastating in its analysis: Legend [...]

This evening, Matthew Podwysocki drew my attention to an amusing article over on Phil Trelford's blog, in which people compare various versions of an algorithm for producing left-truncatable primes.

I can't resist a round of golf, and I was of course tempted by Matt Curran's 17-line Haskell entry, so here's the exact same algorithm in 6 [...]