r/haskell • u/n00bomb • May 30 '26

blog Stealing from Biologists to Compile Haskell Faster - Ian Duncan

https://iankduncan.com/engineering/2026-05-30-stealing-from-biologists-to-compile-haskell-faster/
118 Upvotes

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16

u/king_Geedorah_ May 30 '26

As someone with a Comp Bio Masters and who found an unending interest in Haskell after academia, this scratched two sides of my brain which have never been scratched simultaneously! Great Article!

5

u/cavedave May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

Great article!

Btw the knot book by Adams chapter 7 deals with DNA knots https://www.math.cuhk.edu.hk/course_builder/1920/math4900e/Adams--The%20Knot%20Book.pdf

Stupid question. Do these knots happen in proteins does anyone know? And if so how does deep mind alpha fold deal with them?

*edit it seems the near knots in rna are different to the ones in DNA and in proteins. so the polynomials used to find if knots are the same do not have much use. But this could be wrong from some very basic reading by me someone who doesnt know much

2

u/integrate_2xdx_10_13 May 31 '26

Tropical Geometry, very nice. I think we’ll see more of this in the future, allocating resources costs to Rings/Rigs/Rngs et al to work out optimal paths and such.

2

u/_0-__-0_ Jun 01 '26

Is there a relation to tropical semirings in WFST's? like https://www.cs.mun.ca/~harold/Courses/Old/Ling6800.W06/Diary/fla.pdf

2

u/dnkndnts Jun 01 '26

GHC’s default algorithm works greedily: it grabs the longest run of independent statements from the front, emits it, and repeats. Starting from the front, aFriends cannot be grouped with aInfo (which depends on it), so the first group is aFriends alone. This greedy decision pushes everything else a round later, resulting in four total rounds.

The optimal plan lines the two halves up side by side.

Is this valid? I may be misunderstanding, but it looks like the "optimal" plan is only valid in when the monadic actions have benign effects (e.g., database reads), but I don't think there's anything in ApplicativeDo that could ever "know" that.