Vital and Pivotal

Vital is a Haskell implementation that takes a document-centered approach, much like a Mathematica notebook.  Its successor, Pivotal, is a Haskell re-implementation of the Java original.  Pivotal is only in the early stages.  Both feel like incomplete implementations, but Vital in particular seems suitable for sandbox-style exploration of Haskell.

Implications of Non-Strict Functions

Here is a great little Haskell snippet that will wrench you out of imperative thinking:

notimperative x = (a,b,c,d) where
  (a,b) = incr x c
  (c,d) = incr d a
  incr i j = (i+1,j+1)

The result of evaluating notimperative 1 is (2,5,4,3).

A pithier, but more obvious, version is:

notimperative2 x = (a,b) where
  (a,b) = (b+1,x)

Ivy

Ivy is the Ant group's answer to Maven.  It provides dependency management that is tightly integrated with Ant.

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Sandboxie

Sandboxie is a Windows virtualization application that allows you to run arbitrary programs within an isolated sandbox.  It prevents applications from making permanent changes to the true file system and registry.  Apart from the security service that it may provide, it allows you to test software installers without making any permanent changes to your system.

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