> Is your research related to programming languages? Yep: I just finished a Master's degree with a focus on programming language semantics and analysis. I'm in

> Is your research related to programming languages? Yep: I just finished a Master's degree with a focus on programming language semantics and analysis. I'm interested in all kinds of static analyses and type systems -- preferably things we as humans can deduce from the source without having to run a separate analysis tool. > Also I'm going to have to think about "computing a new value" vs. "modifying state" —not sure I quite get it... It's kind of a subtle distinction. A value doesn't need to have any particular locus of existence; semantically, we only care about its information content, not where it exists in memory. As a corollary, for anyone to use that value, we have to explicitly pass it onward. On the other hand, mutation is all about a locus of existence, since ostensibly someone else will be looking at the slot you're mutating, and they don't need to be told that you changed something in order to use the updated value. (Which is the root of the problem, quite frankly!)