Functional Programming at Google Summer of Code

[haskell]

The OCaml Summer Project is aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml. At the end of the summer, we will fly all of the students who have completed their projects succesfully out for a meeting in New York, where people will present their projects and get a chance to shmooze with other members of the OCaml community.

Functional programming takes another step towards the mainstream.

[Hikaru79]

haskell @ Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:28 am wrote:

At the end of the summer, we will fly all of the students who have completed their projects succesfully out for a meeting in New York, where people will present their projects and get a chance to shmooze with other members of the OCaml community.

Your use of the word "we" implies you're involved in this? What's your role?

[bugzpodder]

typical plagiarizing case

[haskell]

Lol... If you visited the link you wouldn't be asking.

But in short, I'm lazy, so I copied and pasted.

[Naveg]

you know the [ quote] tags aren't so hard to use

[Clayton]

haskell wrote:

Lol... If you visited the link you wouldn't be asking.

Now I know it can't be possible, but Hikaru79 did in fact visit the link (I saw it firsthand). But the fact that you left out any comment or [quote] tags led me to also believe that you were perhaps participating.

[haskell]

Why would it matter if I was participating or not O.o.

[Clayton]

Just an interesting thing I suppose. If you ask me, the whole deal is pretty damn sweet, and I wouldn't mind meeting some of the people that do get accepted.

[Cervantes]

Presentation of the original post aside, this is really sweet! Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Is anyone interested in doing it? If I didn't already have a job lined up, I'd totally go for this.

I think the company that is handling this does other things with O'Caml and possibly other functional languages. If you want to code functionally but don't get accepted to this, check out the company that puts this on--they might have some other positions.

[Clayton]

I actually meant to mention that to you, but it slipped my mind...

Either way, yes, it sounds like an amazing program, and were I eligible to apply, I most definitely would. What better a way to get more into functional programming than working with a functional language?

[haskell]

Thats why I posted it as soon as I found it. Woulda been earlier, but I don't really check GSOC very often.

Maybe in a couple years other functional languages might make the leap? Haskell seems like the likely next one, though it isn't as popular as ML. But, if this O'Caml SOC turns out well, maybe Microsoft would bring their Cambridge project out too[which is GHC and Haskell research].

[wtd]

Cervantes @ Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:54 am wrote:

I think the company that is handling this does other things with O'Caml

You think correctly.

[haskell]

From http://janestcapital.com/careers.html#it

Quote:

Job Qualifications

We want people with:

* A strong mathematical background, including a good understanding of probability and statistics, calculus, algorithms, etc. We draw on ideas from everywhere we can, so broad interest and experience in a variety of scientific fields is important.
* A well-rounded programming background. We use a variety of programming languages, from C++ to python to ocaml --- so we need people who are comfortable learning new programming paradigms. Many of our systems are built in ocaml, so experience with ML or other functional languages is very useful. Applicants should have a strong UNIX background, and should be good at reasoning about the way computer systems work.
* A commitment to the practical. The quantitative research department is tightly integrated with our trading operation, and we work very hard to keep our analysis relevant. One of the big attractions of our work is the opportunity to apply serious ideas to real-world problems.
* Great communication skills. We need people who can explain things clearly and cogently, who can read dense academic papers and write clear documentation.

So yeah, they basically require it.