The OCaml Summer Project

The OCaml Summer Project

[Yaron M. Minsky]

I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The 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.

The project is being funded and run by Jane Street Capital. As people on 
the list likely know at this point, we make extensive use of OCaml here 
at Jane Street, and are excited about the idea of encouraging and 
growing the OCaml community.

If you'd like to learn more about the project, you can look at our 
website here:

    http://osp2007.janestcapital.com

We'd love to have professors tell their students about the project, 
since we hope it will do some real good in terms of increasing interest 
in functional programming.

Please direct any questions or suggestions you have to 
osp@janestcapital.com.

y

(p.s., we had a few DNS problems over the last day or so, so if you have 
trouble reaching the site, it should get resolved when caches expire 
later today.)

Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Yaron M. Minsky]

One quick follow-up: the email address I gave was actually not 
functioning at all until about 10 minutes ago, and all messages sent to 
it have been silently eaten by our spam-filter.  I apologize.  Emails 
should go through now.

y

Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The 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.
> 
> The project is being funded and run by Jane Street Capital. As people on 
> the list likely know at this point, we make extensive use of OCaml here 
> at Jane Street, and are excited about the idea of encouraging and 
> growing the OCaml community.
> 
> If you'd like to learn more about the project, you can look at our 
> website here:
> 
>    http://osp2007.janestcapital.com
> 
> We'd love to have professors tell their students about the project, 
> since we hope it will do some real good in terms of increasing interest 
> in functional programming.
> 
> Please direct any questions or suggestions you have to 
> osp@janestcapital.com.
> 
> y
> 
> (p.s., we had a few DNS problems over the last day or so, so if you have 
> trouble reaching the site, it should get resolved when caches expire 
> later today.)
> 

Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Nathaniel Gray]

> Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is aimed
> > at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding students over
> > the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.

Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on.  Will students
have advisors for their projects?  I have a few ideas for projects and
it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.

Cheers,
-n8

-- 
>>>-- Nathaniel Gray -- Caltech Computer Science ------>
>>>-- Mojave Project -- http://mojave.cs.caltech.edu -->

Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Gabriel Kerneis]

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Le Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:29:40 -0800, "Nathaniel Gray" <n8gray@gmail.com>
a écrit :
> > Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is
> > > aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding
> > > students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
> 
> Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on.  Will students
> have advisors for their projects?  I have a few ideas for projects and
> it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.

And I'm an interested student looking for ideas (the binary trees
project on the OCSP page seems fine but I'd be glad to have more
ideas) ;-)
Other questions :
- is it possible to propose several projects (per student) and let
the OCSP team decide which one is the better ?
- (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
France) - but i guess i can find this on the Internet - and to what
extent will you pay the flight/food/housing/etc. fees ?

Sincerely,
-- 
Gabriel Kerneis


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Fwd: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Yaron Minsky]

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Whoops, neglected to send this to the list...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yaron Minsky <yminsky@cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Jan 25, 2007 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project
To: Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel.kerneis@enst.fr>

On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel.kerneis@enst.fr> wrote:
>
> Le Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:29:40 -0800, "Nathaniel Gray" <n8gray@gmail.com>
> a écrit :
> > > Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > > > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is
> > > > aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding
> > > > students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
> >
> > Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on.  Will students
> > have advisors for their projects?  I have a few ideas for projects and
> > it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.
>
> And I'm an interested student looking for ideas (the binary trees
> project on the OCSP page seems fine but I'd be glad to have more
> ideas) ;-)
> Other questions :
> - is it possible to propose several projects (per student) and let
> the OCSP team decide which one is the better ?


Just one proposal per student, I'm afraid.  We'd rather you chose a project
you liked and believed in, and come up with the best proposal you can fo
rit.

- (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
> France) - but i guess i can find this on the Internet - and to what
> extent will you pay the flight/food/housing/etc. fees ?


We will pay for the travel and your stay.  I don't expect we'll pay for all
of your meals, but we'll have a few dinners for the group.  As for the visa
issue, my expectation is that students will figure this out on their own.  I
suspect that for the most part I believe a tourist visa should do, but I
don't really know the details, and it will no doubt vary from country to
country.

Sincerely,
> --
> Gabriel Kerneis
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management:
> http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list
> Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>
>
>
>

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Fwd: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Yaron Minsky]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yaron Minsky <yminsky@cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Jan 25, 2007 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project
To: Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel.kerneis@enst.fr>

On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel.kerneis@enst.fr> wrote:
>
> Le Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:29:40 -0800, "Nathaniel Gray" <n8gray@gmail.com>
> a écrit :
> > > Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> > > > I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is
> > > > aimed at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding
> > > > students over the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.
> >
> > Sounds great, but there's one thing I'm not clear on.  Will students
> > have advisors for their projects?  I have a few ideas for projects and
> > it would be fun to get a student or two working on them.
>
> And I'm an interested student looking for ideas (the binary trees
> project on the OCSP page seems fine but I'd be glad to have more
> ideas) ;-)
> Other questions :
> - is it possible to propose several projects (per student) and let
> the OCSP team decide which one is the better ?


Just one proposal per student, I'm afraid.  We'd rather you chose a project
you liked and believed in, and come up with the best proposal you can fo
rit.

- (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
> France) - but i guess i can find this on the Internet - and to what
> extent will you pay the flight/food/housing/etc. fees ?


We will pay for the travel and your stay.  I don't expect we'll pay for all
of your meals, but we'll have a few dinners for the group.  As for the visa
issue, my expectation is that students will figure this out on their own.  I
suspect that for the most part I believe a tourist visa should do, but I
don't really know the details, and it will no doubt vary from country to
country.

Sincerely,
> --
> Gabriel Kerneis
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management:
> http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list
> Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>
>
>
>

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Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Markus Mottl]

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On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel.kerneis@enst.fr> wrote:
>
> - (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
> visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living in
> France)


Most "older" EU-countries (this is definitely true for France) qualify for
the Visa waiver program.  This means if you are e.g. a French citizen, you
only need a valid passport to stay up to 90 days in the US.  You can find
more info on this page:

  http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html

Regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Mottl        http://www.ocaml.info        markus.mottl@gmail.com

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Re: [Caml-list] The OCaml Summer Project

[Dário Abdulrehman]

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Hi,

Yesterday when I checked the suggested projects page there was a machine
learning framework project, which apparently was removed.
Did you give up on this one?

Thanks

On 1/25/07, Yaron M. Minsky <yminsky@janestcapital.com> wrote:
>
> I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The 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.
>
> The project is being funded and run by Jane Street Capital. As people on
> the list likely know at this point, we make extensive use of OCaml here
> at Jane Street, and are excited about the idea of encouraging and
> growing the OCaml community.
>
> If you'd like to learn more about the project, you can look at our
> website here:
>
>     http://osp2007.janestcapital.com
>
> We'd love to have professors tell their students about the project,
> since we hope it will do some real good in terms of increasing interest
> in functional programming.
>
> Please direct any questions or suggestions you have to
> osp@janestcapital.com.
>
> y
>
> (p.s., we had a few DNS problems over the last day or so, so if you have
> trouble reaching the site, it should get resolved when caches expire
> later today.)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management:
> http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list
> Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>

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Re: [Caml-list] The OCaml Summer Project

[Jon Harrop]

On Thursday 25 January 2007 16:52, Yaron M. Minsky wrote:
> I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project.

Sounds like an excellent idea and the projects all look fascinating. However, 
I do have some comments on the "Binary tree library" project:

OCaml currently has two separate implementations of AVL trees in Map and Set 
functors. Set already has fast union and split operations.

Having two separate implementations is wasteful but more efficient. The 
underlying tree code could be factored out into another functor but this is 
costly in terms of performance. Also, the OCaml stdlib has used an odd choice 
of optimisations: inlining height calculation (which is quite a small benefit 
in the context of functors and polymorphism) but not amortising single-child 
trees into a separate constructor (which can remove up to 50% of the GC's 
effort). So the code can be made shorter and faster.

I've already implemented my own AVL set using the node-specialisation trick. 
Performance is ~30% faster, IIRC. I've also wanted to write a functional 
array based on AVL trees (O(log n) lookup but fast sub, append, insert, 
delete etc.) and a camlp4 extension to support pattern matching over this 
type. Lists and arrays are rather priviledged containers in OCaml, having 
pattern matching and literals, but trees are better in many respects and 
would make an excellent general-purpose container.

Finally, having to use functors does obfuscate OCaml code that deal with Sets 
and Maps in many cases, particularly because there are no built-in Int and 
Float modules so you must write your own. I often find that this superfluous 
code is as long as all of the code using the Sets/Maps. Although it would 
be "dangerous", Sets and Maps implemented without functors are much easier to 
use. After all, Hashtbl is typically used in that way.

It is also worth noting that several people (Diego, Jean-Christophe) have 
written other tree libraries using various data structures (RB, trie, splay 
etc.). As far as I can tell, AVL trees are a good all-rounder.

Best of luck with the projects!

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists

Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Gerd Stolpmann]

Am Donnerstag, den 25.01.2007, 23:43 -0500 schrieb Markus Mottl:
> On 1/25/07, Gabriel Kerneis <gabriel.kerneis@enst.fr> wrote:
>         - (if i were to be selected and finish the job) what kind of
>         visa/passport/etc. do one need to come to the USA (I'm living
>         in
>         France)
> 
> Most "older" EU-countries (this is definitely true for France) qualify
> for the Visa waiver program.  This means if you are e.g. a French
> citizen, you only need a valid passport to stay up to 90 days in the
> US.

This is not true. The US are picky about which passports they accept.
You need a passport of the newest generation (with biometrics features)
- older ones, although being valid, are not accepted.

Gerd

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany 
gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
Phone: +49-6151-153855                  Fax: +49-6151-997714
------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [Caml-list] Re: The OCaml Summer Project

[Markus Mottl]

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On 1/26/07, Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de> wrote:
>
> Am Donnerstag, den 25.01.2007, 23:43 -0500 schrieb Markus Mottl:
> > Most "older" EU-countries (this is definitely true for France) qualify
> > for the Visa waiver program.  This means if you are e.g. a French
> > citizen, you only need a valid passport to stay up to 90 days in the
> > US.
>
> This is not true. The US are picky about which passports they accept.
> You need a passport of the newest generation (with biometrics features)
> - older ones, although being valid, are not accepted.
>

This is not quite true.  Only newer passports (younger than 26 October 2006)
have to be biometric.  The link to the government page in my previous mail
details the different passport requirements depending on the date they were
issued.  I'll put an entry concerning travel requirements into the FAQ.

Please mail me without CCing the list if there is more to discuss on travel
requirements.

Regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Mottl        http://www.ocaml.info        markus.mottl@gmail.com

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Re: [Caml-list] The OCaml Summer Project

[Xavier Leroy]

> I am pleased to announce the OCaml Summer Project. The project is aimed
> at encouraging growth in the OCaml community by funding students over
> the summer to work on open-source projects in OCaml.

I just wanted to say a big "thank you" to you and the Jane Street
Capital people for donating the time and money to organize such an
event.  It will be very interesting to see what comes out of it.

My attempt to put the visa discussion at rest.  I believe Yaron and
Markus are right: a tourist visa (or visa waiver program) is
probably enough; whether you need an actual visa or not is a
complicated function of your country of citizenship and of the date
your passport was issued, but for citizens of "old Europe", this
function returns "no visa needed" with high probability.

For more details, see the Web sites of the ministry of foreign affairs
or of the US consulate in your country (URLs for France included below
for your convenience).

Let me add that if you never visited Manhattan before, it's well worth
the trip.  One more reason to participate in this project!

Cheers,

- Xavier Leroy

http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/pays-zones-geo_833/etats-unis_471/conseils-aux-voyageurs_13261/entree-sejour_29143.html

http://www.amb-usa.fr/consul/niv/needvisa/default.htm