BFPG Meetup - May 2025 - Compiling parametric polymorphism + Haskell Security Team
Join the BFPG Discord: https://discord.gg/yYz2d8w7FY
Agenda
18:00: Welcome and setup
Presentation #1: A "third way" of compiling parametric polymorphism - Isaac Elliott
Presentation #2: Two years of the Haskell Security Response Team - Fraser Tweedale
20:00ish: Pack down, head to Criterion pub.
A "third way" of compiling parametric polymorphism
This talk is exposition for and a progress update on a compiler project of mine. The project's motivating question is: can we have elegant and powerful type systems (such as Haskell's) with significantly less heap allocation?
Part of the reason Haskell allocates so much, and requires a high-performance garbage collector, is that everything is boxed by default. This makes important type system features like parametric polymorphism (generics) easier to compile.
Languages like C++ and Rust take a different approach to generics that doesn't require boxing, but give up more advanced type system features as a result.
I've been experimenting with a third approach. It's not strictly better than either of the previous two, but it's better than each in ways that matter to me.
Two years of the Haskell Security Response Team
It's two years since the Haskell Security Response Team began its work. In this presentation I'll explain why Haskell (and every serious language) needs a security apparatus, what work we do, and how we do it. We'll look at the progress we have made, what we've learned, and future opportunitie