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I keep meaning to write more of these too. My blog is (ostensibly) about programming, but I find that I keep drifting further and further into mathematical top
by cruise02 17y ago
I keep meaning to write more of these too. My blog is (ostensibly) about programming, but I find that I keep drifting further and further into mathematical topics without tying them back into programming somehow. I should probably commit to one or the other, I just can't decide.
- eru 17y agoYou don't need to. There are surprising connections. E.g. between partial differentiation and algebraic datatypes: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers#Differentiation_of_data_types http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers#Differentiation...
- cruise02 17y agoI guess my third option is to concentrate more on finding those connections. Thanks for the feedback.
- eru 17y agoZippers are surprisingly practical. E.g. for a file system: http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Continuations.html#zipper-fs http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Continuations.html#zipper-f... If you want to read about Zippers and don't mind using your brain, then the presentation in "he Derivative of a Regular Type is its Type of One-Hole Contexts" (http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ctm/diff.pdf http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ctm/diff.pdf) is right for you. He talks about the connection between math and computer science: "Apart from the implementation of this technology, and the development of a library of related generic utilities, this work opens up a host of fascinating theoretical possibilities - one only has to open one’s old school textbooks almost at random and ask ‘what does this mean for datatypes?’."