Stream: contributing

Topic: Adding the parallel-letter-frequency Exercism exercise?

Aurélien Geron (Aug 09 2026 at 23:13):

The parallel-letter-frequency exercise on Exercism.org is about parallel computing: the user must write code that counts the number of letters in multiple string, processing strings in parallel.

Is there currently any platform I could use for such parallel computing? None are listed on roc-awesome, but perhaps there's a hidden gem out there?

Luke Boswell (Aug 09 2026 at 23:20):

I'm not tracking anything.

Aurélien Geron (Aug 09 2026 at 23:25):

I can imagine something like that:

import pf.Parallel

count_ascii_letters : Str -> Dict(U8, U64)
count_ascii_letters = |str| ...

reduce : List(Dict(U8, U64)) -> Dict(U8, U64)
reduce = |results| ...

parallel_count_ascii_letters : List(Str) -> Dict(U8, U64)
parallel_count_ascii_letters = |strings|
    Parallel.map_reduce(strings, count_ascii_letters, reduce)

Richard Feldman (Aug 09 2026 at 23:34):

yeah I have a bunch of plans for this but they are explicitly for 0.2.0 :smile:

Richard Feldman (Aug 09 2026 at 23:35):

it's a big pile of work to get it to a point where it's ergonomic

Aurélien Geron (Aug 09 2026 at 23:35):

That's great, looking forward to it!

Richard Feldman (Aug 09 2026 at 23:35):

but we've been designing with it in mind fortunately!

Aurélien Geron (Aug 09 2026 at 23:36):

Is the plan to include this in the language itself or to require the platform to provide parallel computing features?

Richard Feldman (Aug 09 2026 at 23:37):

a mix of both

Richard Feldman (Aug 09 2026 at 23:38):

there are some builtins that need to be added to describe what you want, and then it's up to the platform to decide how that works - e.g. greenthreads or similar

Aurélien Geron (Aug 09 2026 at 23:38):

Awesome

Last updated: Aug 12 2026 at 12:35 UTC