An email (lightly edited) I got from a friend working on Financial Software in London
"Here I am minding my own business, doing my job testing/developing Trading strategies designed by one of the Quants + Traders and what do I hear -
someone in the corner is talking about something very
mathematical - it all sounds gobbledegook to me and then I hear the word "Re-inforcement Learning" (I know you work on something like that)
I walk over, say hi (to some French mathematicians from Ecole Poly) and casually inquire what they are talking about, comes the reply - Modern Statistical Learning for predicting market behavior and tuning algorithmic trade strategies,
On the Screen - Java code - author @Ravi Mohan
There is no running away from you is there :-)
"
No there isn't!
;-)
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
A Haskell Journey
Over the last couple of years, I've been using Haskell (oddly enough) as a scripting/shell language, somewhat akin to bash, to tie together various bits and pieces of code written in other languages. (See http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/data/Basics.html for some shell like utilities).
One of my goals for this year is to really master Haskell so I can use it as a primary language. As I dig in, I find there are two levels of Haskell.
Level 1 consists of algebraic data types, pure (and lazy) functions, typeclasses and modules. Someone fluent in another language can (relatively) easily wrap their heads around this portion of the language and start programming. There are plenty of tutorials and books (including "Real World Haskell") that teach this style of Haskell usage.
But, sooner or later one comes across code that is written in "level 2" Haskell - making heavy use of Monads, Monoids, Arrows and all the other Category Theory goodness. Monads get an abnormal mindshare among would-be Haskell developers but there is more to Haskell than Monads. No one has really written a comprehensive guide to this bit of Haskell. The nearest we have is the TypeClassopedia (warning, PDF) but that is more a collection of links for further reading than a detailed exposition. The Wikibook is uneven. RWH does a hop-skip-and jump over these bits - a correct decision given the focus and size of the book.
What we really need is an "Advanced Haskell" book which assumes a knowledge of Level 1 Haskell and then lays out the CT bits in an orderly fashion. Monads for example, are best understood from a Category Theory perspective than through some tortured analogy to Space Stations or Elephants or whatever. Some exposition of Type Theory would help too - a knowledge of kinds, for example is very useful to decode some of the advanced bits ( TAPL's last chapters have a good exposition iirc).
In the absence of an "Advanced Haskell" book, the best option is to read the various papers, trawl the mailing lists and so on for answers to specific questions. I've learned some Category Theory before (and am fairly comfortable with Type Theory) so I haven't found this to be particularly hard but I can see how it could be (very) hard for someone without this background. Mastery of this level would be when I can code *fluently* with Comonads and such. I am not there yet.
That said, Haskell is the most elegant language I've ever used and I plan to write a lot of code in it. I plan to open source some Haskell code over the next couple of months, so we'll see how much I've really understood!
One of my goals for this year is to really master Haskell so I can use it as a primary language. As I dig in, I find there are two levels of Haskell.
Level 1 consists of algebraic data types, pure (and lazy) functions, typeclasses and modules. Someone fluent in another language can (relatively) easily wrap their heads around this portion of the language and start programming. There are plenty of tutorials and books (including "Real World Haskell") that teach this style of Haskell usage.
But, sooner or later one comes across code that is written in "level 2" Haskell - making heavy use of Monads, Monoids, Arrows and all the other Category Theory goodness. Monads get an abnormal mindshare among would-be Haskell developers but there is more to Haskell than Monads. No one has really written a comprehensive guide to this bit of Haskell. The nearest we have is the TypeClassopedia (warning, PDF) but that is more a collection of links for further reading than a detailed exposition. The Wikibook is uneven. RWH does a hop-skip-and jump over these bits - a correct decision given the focus and size of the book.
What we really need is an "Advanced Haskell" book which assumes a knowledge of Level 1 Haskell and then lays out the CT bits in an orderly fashion. Monads for example, are best understood from a Category Theory perspective than through some tortured analogy to Space Stations or Elephants or whatever. Some exposition of Type Theory would help too - a knowledge of kinds, for example is very useful to decode some of the advanced bits ( TAPL's last chapters have a good exposition iirc).
In the absence of an "Advanced Haskell" book, the best option is to read the various papers, trawl the mailing lists and so on for answers to specific questions. I've learned some Category Theory before (and am fairly comfortable with Type Theory) so I haven't found this to be particularly hard but I can see how it could be (very) hard for someone without this background. Mastery of this level would be when I can code *fluently* with Comonads and such. I am not there yet.
That said, Haskell is the most elegant language I've ever used and I plan to write a lot of code in it. I plan to open source some Haskell code over the next couple of months, so we'll see how much I've really understood!
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