Taking on a new role in the GHC ecosystem

Announcements
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Friends,

After over a decade of spending a large share of my waking hours thinking about GHC, it feels like the right time to try something new. In the coming months I will be starting a new chapter at Positron AI, where I will be working to address the ballooning environmental impact of AI inference.

In the past decade Haskell has undergone an incredible amount of change, transitioning from a research vehicle to an industry-relevant tool. As the language has grown in adoption, size, and maturity, GHC’s developer community has flourished. Ten years ago our weekly calls were often little more than three or four of us sharing updates over the past week’s work. Today, these same calls have grown to over a dozen regular attendees, many working on areas of the compiler that I’ve hardly touched.

I am glad that I have been able to meet and learn from so many of you in these calls. This fills me with confidence that the roles which I’ve filled over the years will be taken on by the incredible group of GHC developers both within and beyond Well-Typed.

While my focus may be changing, this is certainly not farewell. I will remain a partner at Well-Typed to carry on with existing projects and will continue contributing to GHC, though I may be a bit less hands-on than I have been in the past. I’ll be retaining some on-going duties in GHC maintenance and will continue to advise and review patches. Moreover, I look forward to seeing all of you at Zurihac and elsewhere over the coming years.

Being able to spend so much of my time working on GHC has truly been a privilege, the sort of technical challenge that I only dreamed of as a graduate student eleven years ago. However, what made this time so rewarding was the Haskell community itself. I’d like to thank everyone who contributed tickets, code, and usage to GHC over the years. Knowing that the compiler I helped build was contributed to, and depended upon, by so many people made the long debugging sessions, release crunches, and challenging discussions worthwhile.

While I am excited about taking on a new challenge, it is also gratifying to look back at many my positive memories working with such a dedicated community. Thank you all for your help, guidance, and encouragement over the years. I look forward to seeing you around!

Cheers,

~ Ben

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Without your kind help in the last few years, it couldn’t have been possible for me to do useful contributions to GHC, and I believe it’s the same for a lot of other GHC developers as well. Thanks for everything, Ben, wish you fully enjoy your next adventures and I still look forward to see you around!

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Ben,

You are an absolute star, and we will miss you sorely. I so admire your deep technical expertise, your careful and sustained attention to detail, your thoughtful wisdom, and your unfailingly friendly and inclusive approach. You have made an absolutely huge contribution to the Haskell ecosystem, and to GHC in particular.

An occasional change is a good thing in the big story of everyone’s life, and I’m sure that you will revel in new opportunities at Positron. I am delighted that you are not leaving us entirely, so I can still consult you occasionally.

With many many thanks and warm good wishes

Simon

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Thank you for your long-time service Ben! We all owe you a lot and I’m sure we’ll feel the loss as you shift focus. Best of luck with the new chapter !

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Congratulations on the new opportunity, Ben, and on having had such a profound impact on the world of Haskell!

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Ben, you’re an absolute pleasure to work with and probably the most helpful person I’ve met in Haskell, willing to spend large amounts of time on some of my random requests (FreeBSD, static bindists, etc.).

You’ve always remained kind and supportive, even when discussions were tense.

The expertise you’ve built up, not just about GHC, but core tooling and libraries, will be impossible to replace.

All of these things and my personal interactions with you at ZuriHac were incredibly inspiring for me.

Thanks for all your work and the way you collaborated with us. See you next ZuriHac!

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Ben -

You’ve made tremendous contributions to GHC and the wider Haskell community over the years. Having you working on GHC and particularly the runtime made it much easier for me to step back from day-to-day involvement, and GHC has gone from strength to strength with your help. You’ve cleaned up, fixed, and reworked so much of my dubious code - there are many examples but just to mention one: fixing all the memory ordering issues to get things working reliably on arm64 was a monumental effort.

It’s a sign of a healthy project when we can turn over some of the core developers from time to time, gaining some fresh eyes and energy. I was glad to be able to do that, and I hope it works out just as well for you.

Congrats on the new job and all the best for the future!

Simon

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Ben,

I thank you for all your help over the year’s in managing and contributing the to GHC project and other ecosystem efforts. The number of public and private contributions over this part of your career is astonishing, and I’m sure there are many which people aren’t even aware of.

I remember many situations early on my career where you spent a large amount of time helping me with GHC. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to reach the point I’m at now without your assistance in these early stages. It has been my utmost privilege to work with you over the last 10 years. I fondly remember the time we spent together in Philadelphia with Csongor, David and Ryan or the trips to ICFP from the early years.

It sounds like a great new opportunity for you to try something new, and I am sure that you will make a great success of your new role.

Matt

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Ben, thank you for the great work on GHC! And all the best for your new role at Positron! :slight_smile:

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Ben,

Our conversations during the GHC developers’ workshop and Zurihac 2023, are amongst the most memorable interactions I’ve ever had. I owe my git skills, and the courage to look at GHC’s source code to you. I hope I’ll get another opportunity to talk to you in the next Zurihac, and wish you the best with your new job and aspirations.

BTW, if you are a newcommer and don’t know what to do, or where to go, all you need to do is find Ben Gamari!

Artin

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Ben,

You’re an absolute legend! I’m sure that without you, the entire GHC maintenance effort in the past years would have come to a halt. Yet thanks to your involvement, we managed not only to maintain but also to evolve and stabilise GHC into a healthy, industry-relevant open source product. It is hard to overstate how much my contributions to GHC were only possible because of your involvement in the “machine room” of GHC. You are an incredibly kind and helpful person and I can’t wait to talk to you about your new job when next we see each other (probably at ZuriHac) :slight_smile:

Sebastian

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Thank you all! I appreciate your kind words and look forward to seeing you in Zurich at the latest. Don’t hesitate to reach out via Matrix or email if you would like to chat.

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Ben, you’ve been a rock for GHC development all these years. I want to also especially thank you for your final efforts in the surrounding ecosystem, helping with the big migration, and especially for then rounding out the infamous email migration, which had been haunting us for years. You’re leaving everything you touched in a much better place than how you found it, and future maintainers of haskell infra will have a much better time of it thanks to your efforts.

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Ben, you’re an excellent mentor and leader. I’m very glad I was fortunate to work with you the last couple of years on an almost daily basis, and to tackle with you so many difficult technical challenges, design interesting solutions – and much more.

Cheers :slight_smile:

Rodrigo

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Thanks for everything you’ve done, Ben. It has been a pleasure to work with you.

See you at Zurihac!

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Thanks for all your hard work on GHC over the years Ben. Our ecosystem would not be where it is today without your input.

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Thanks for everything you’ve done Ben. It was a pleasure working with you and I hope you still find time to do some hacking.

Let’s get beers at Zurihac :slight_smile:

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Thank you for all your amazing work on GHC. And good luck with your new venture.

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Ben, your feedback to my work relating to GHC has been a highlight of said work. Thanks for being available to get newbies onboard

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Thank you Ben for your patient work and responses. Best wishes for your new role.

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