[Haskell-cafe] Open-source projects for beginning Haskell students?

[Brent Yorgey]

Hi everyone,

I am currently teaching a half-credit introductory Haskell class for
undergraduates.  This is the third time I've taught it.  Both of the
previous times, for their final project I gave them the option of
contributing to an open-source project; a couple groups/individuals
took me up on it and I think it ended up being a modest success.

So I'd like to do it again this time around, and am looking for
particular projects I can suggest to them.  Do you have an open-source
project with a few well-specified tasks that a relative beginner (see
below) could reasonably make a contribution towards in the space of
about four weeks? I'm aware that most tasks don't fit that profile,
but even complex projects usually have a few "simple-ish" tasks that
haven't yet been done just because "no one has gotten around to it
yet".

If you have any such projects, I'd love to hear about it!  Just send
me a paragraph or so describing your project and explaining what
task(s) you could use help with --- something that I could put on the
course website for students to look at.

Here are a few more details:

* The students will be working on the projects from approximately the
  end of this month through the end of April.  During the next two
  weeks they would be contacting you to discuss the possibility of
  working on your project.

* By "relative beginner" I mean someone familiar with the material
  listed here: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis194/lectures.html and just
  trying to come to terms with Applicative and Monad.  They definitely
  do not know much if anything about optimization/profiling, GADTs,
  the mtl, or Haskell-programming-in-the-large.  (Although part of the
  point of the project is to teach them a bit about
  programming-in-the-(medium/large)).

* What I would hope from you is a willingness to exchange email and/or
  chat with the student(s) over the course of the project, to give
  them a bit of guidance/mentoring.  I am certainly willing to help on
  that front, but of course I probably don't know much about your
  particular project.

Thanks!
-Brent