HasChor: Functional Choreographic Programming for All (Functional Pearl)

Abstract

Choreographic programming is an emerging paradigm for programming distributed systems. In choreographic programming, the programmer describes the behavior of the entire system as a single, unified program -- a choreography -- which is then compiled to individual programs that run on each node, via a compilation step called endpoint projection. We present a new model for functional choreographic programming where choreographies are expressed as computations in a monad. Our model supports cutting-edge choreographic programming features that enable modularity and code reuse: in particular, it supports higher-order choreographies, in which a choreography may be passed as an argument to another choreography, and location-polymorphic choreographies, in which a choreography can abstract over nodes. Our model is implemented in a Haskell library, HasChor, which lets programmers write choreographic programs while using the rich Haskell ecosystem at no cost, bringing choreographic programming within reach of everyday Haskellers. Moreover, thanks to Haskell's abstractions, the implementation of the HasChor library itself is concise and understandable, boiling down endpoint projection to its short and simple essence.