Coming Soon: Virtual Haskell Cohack

Before COVID-19 left its mark on the world, a group of us met one a month in New York for the “Haskell Cohack”, hacking together on Haskell programming projects of various forms. We had people there to learn Haskell or teach it, to talk about category theory, to work on core libraries, or just to fiddle around with programming problems like Project Euler or Advent of Code. It was great fun! But then this virus shut down the city, and we have missed our monthly meeting ever since.

I’m now reviving the Cohack, but in virtual form. Our first session will be Saturday, July 10, and details are at https://www.meetup.com/NY-Haskell/events/279067287/. I hope you’ll consider attending. Since it’s virtual, you don’t even need to be in New York to come.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Meet fellow Haskellers in small-group intro sessions. I think introductions work best in small groups, so I plan to split us up into small groups (4 to 5 people each) to meet each other. If you attend more of the monthly Cohack events, you can meet even more people.
• Collaborate on projects. The word “project” is pretty flexible. If you want to learn or teach Haskell, please come! At the other extreme, you’re welcome to pop in and ask for help hacking on GHC or other advanced projects. You can work one-on-one with someone pair programming, or join a group discussion. If you want collaborators for a project, topic, or discussion of your choice, we’ll have some time dedicated to elevator pitches for projects before the work time starts.
• Hear some interesting lightning talks from fellow attendees, focusing on what they worked on during the event, or on any other interesting Haskell topic they would like to share about.

I’m basing this around Zoom’s “breakout rooms” feature, meaning it will be easy to organize yourselves into groups of your choice. I’ll add rooms for projects that give pitches, but also leave some generic rooms around for ad hoc organizing.

There are very few rules. You can work on whatever you want, alone or with others, whether or not it’s open source. You don’t even have to work on Haskell; Haskell-adjacent languages like Elm, Idris, Coq, Agda, ML, etc. are completely welcome. The only real rule I’ll enforce is to be respectful and inclusive to others.

I hope to see you (virtually) there. Please RSVP on the meetup link above, so that I know who’s coming.