4 ms·
The definition of a mold is clear (to anyone who has had higher education in mathematics, which seems a prerequisite for this introduction). What I don't have i
by morsch 11y ago
The definition of a mold is clear (to anyone who has had higher education in mathematics, which seems a prerequisite for this introduction). What I don't have is any intuition about what a mold is.
The example helps a little. The tutorial seems to have another example of a mold in the final section, but I'm only guessing so because of that section's title. I'll be damned if I can tell where the mold is in that section and I cannot relate it at all to the example in your comment.
- urbit 11y agoFrom OP, in the section "Our first mold": After seeing a few span examples, are we ready to describe the set of all spans with a Hoon mold? Well, no, but let's try it anyway. Ignore the syntax (which we'll explain later; this is a tutorial, not a reference manual), and you'll get the idea: ++ span $% [%atom p=@tas] [%cell p=span q=span] [%cube p=* q=span] == This mold is not the entire definition of a Hoon span, just the cases we've seen so far. In English, a valid span is either: - a cell with head `%atom`, and tail some symbol. - a cell with head `%cell`, and tail some pair of spans. - a cell with head `%cube`, and tail a noun-span pair. I do think this is clear enough. I'm not sure it's intuitive enough. The following chapters should help with that; sorry.
- evanpw 11y agoBut is this a representation of a mold or span? It seems to describe a set rather than define a function, so the latter seems more likely, but the section header implies otherwise.
- urbit 11y agoThat's pretty much what a mold is. The syntax is written to look as much as possible like the description of a set, but the semantics are that you're actually defining a function.