Why is making something first-class the key to expressivity?

FromThe Eric Normand Podcast

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Why is making something first-class the key to expressivity?

FromThe Eric Normand Podcast

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Length:

9 minutes

Released:

Aug 20, 2018

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

For audio, video, and text transcripts: https://lispcast.com/why-is-making-something-first-class-the-key-to-expressivity/

Released:

Aug 20, 2018

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

An off-the-cuff stream of Functional Programming ideas, skills, patterns, and news from Functional Programming expert Eric Normand of LispCast. Formerly known as Thoughts on Functional Programming.

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A Theory of Functional Programming 0006: What I want to talk about is this issue of what is an action and what is a calculation in terms of timeliness, because we know that deep down in the computer, everything is an action. Every operation depends on what is that particular locations in memory by The Eric Normand Podcast
20 min listen
Why do we need a Theory of Functional Programming?: Though I have gotten good reception for the theory in general, a few people have asked me why we need a theory. More people have told me I’m complicating Functional Programming, which should be a simple idea. by The Eric Normand Podcast
11 min listen
What Clojure needs to grow — a boring web framework and boring data science: I think a lot about what Clojure needs. Is there something that is sort of the bottleneck for growth? People talk about different things as their hypotheses for what would make it grow. I think that what Clojure needs — I’ll talk about my hypotheses — I t by The Eric Normand Podcast
20 min listen
A Theory of Functional Programming 0002: All right. I am talking about, “A Theory of Functional Programming,” which is a book that I’m working on, and this is actually me working on it right now. I am going to talk about the topic, and hopefully, the transcript will turn into my book. I talked a by The Eric Normand Podcast
37 min listen
What will increase your programming productivity the most?: Lisps have traditionally been highly interactive. This allowed AI researchers and language developers to iterate quickly and learn about what works and what doesn’t. How can you tap into this in your workflow? by The Eric Normand Podcast
11 min listen
How is Functional Programming like grocery shopping?: Our understanding of the real world has to be applicable to the software world. Our programming paradigms need to correspond to our intuitions of the real world. by The Eric Normand Podcast
19 min listen
Programming is a pop culture and what we should do about it: I want to talk about how programming is a pop culture. It’s true, programming is a pop culture. There are big trends, fads, new frameworks coming out all the time. It’s all about attention and getting mind share and people watching your media about what f by The Eric Normand Podcast
14 min listen
A Theory of Functional Programming 0001: OK. I’m trying this out. I’m writing a book. I’m going to move. I’m writing a book. I think I’m going to call it, A Theory of Functional Programming.” Let me explain. Here is the reasoning. That’s bad lighting hold on. I’ll explain what I’m doing and I’ll by The Eric Normand Podcast
36 min listen
A Theory of Functional Programming 0004: Today, we’re going to be talking actions. Now, as counter-intuitive as it may be, functional programming has more to say about actions than it does about data and calculations. At least, more interesting stuff to say. by The Eric Normand Podcast
37 min listen
A Theory of Functional Programming 0003: All right, this is my attempt at writing a book. If you haven’t joined me before, my name is Eric Normand. I’m writing a book called “A Theory of Functional Programming.” The industry needs a good definition of functional programming. No one has provided by The Eric Normand Podcast
30 min listen
How variants can reduce complexity: If we don’t limit it, complexity will get out of hand. One way to limit complexity is by collapsing the number of possible states down to a few known states that we know how to handle. by The Eric Normand Podcast
16 min listen
What a Clojure Web Framework might look like: One of the questions that came up a couple times was what is a Web framework? What does that even mean? I don’t want to get into philosophical discussion about what a framework is. Is it a library or framework or any of those kinds of questions. I’ll tell by The Eric Normand Podcast
22 min listen
Bottom up vs Top Down Programming: I think the real trick to all of that is always think about the data as being forever. One thing that we often do when we’re programming is we want things to be a little bit more concrete. by The Eric Normand Podcast
12 min listen
A Theory of Functional Programming 0005: There are different patterns that we use as functional programmers to reduce the possible states so that it becomes easier to reason about. I think that this is something that we should talk about a little bit more, because it’s actually something that is by The Eric Normand Podcast
19 min listen
Focus on composition first: Where should we start when we are designing out data structures–especially the data that we expect to last a long time. The answer is in the composition operations. by The Eric Normand Podcast
16 min listen
Focus on the data first: What should we design first to make sure our software will last without having to constantly rework our code? We should focus on the data first because it is the most timeless. by The Eric Normand Podcast
13 min listen
Algebraic Properties and Composition: In school, we learn about a few algebraic properties. These apply very well in functional programming because their expression is so simple, their definitions are so simple and they really focus on how things compose. by The Eric Normand Podcast
10 min listen
Should we waste memory?: We have so much memory now, compared to the 1970s, that it often seems like we have memory to burn. I misspoke in a previous episode where I made it seem like I’m in favor of wasting memory. But what did I mean instead? by The Eric Normand Podcast
15 min listen
Divide and conquer algorithms: The divide and conquer pattern is a widely used functional programming pattern. It lets you turn potentially hard problems into trivial problems and then recombine the answers. by The Eric Normand Podcast
12 min listen
The magical leverage of languages: If I write a straightforward solution to a problem in Clojure, it might take me a thousand lines of code to solve it. To handle all the corner cases and everything, I got a thousand lines of code. However, if I take this other approach where it’s much mor by The Eric Normand Podcast
13 min listen
What does it mean for Actions to be first-class?: In Functional Programming, everything needs to be first class? But what does that mean? And why is it important? I discuss the idea of composing Actions and Calculations dynamically. by The Eric Normand Podcast
20 min listen
What is the business value of Clojure?: Is there some reason a business would choose Clojure over other languages? Let’s find out! by The Eric Normand Podcast
14 min listen
Is FP just programming with pure functions?: As I develop and expound this theory, it may seem to be too complicated. Isn’t functional programming just programming with pure functions? Why make this more complicated than that? We talk about my reasons and my goals for the theory. by The Eric Normand Podcast
11 min listen
Build your Core Abstraction: With limited development time, where should you focus your efforts? You should build something timeless at the center of you application to create a strong foundation to build on top of. I call that you Core Abstraction. by The Eric Normand Podcast
13 min listen
Reduce complexity at every step: Postel’s Law states that a program should be liberal in what it accepts and strict in what it sends. What does this have to do with functional programming? How can this help us reduce complexity? by The Eric Normand Podcast
16 min listen
My big beef with refactoring: I love refactoring. It’s therapeutic. It helps productivity. But refactoring is not enough to write good software. We can’t just write it so it works then clean it up. In this episode, I explain why. by The Eric Normand Podcast
20 min listen
What does it mean for programs to be built using “whole values”?: John Hughes, FP researcher extraordinaire, says Whole Values is one of the principles of Functional Programming. But what does he mean? We explore this important concept. by The Eric Normand Podcast
23 min listen
Can you do Functional Programming in any language?: Can you do functional programming in any language? Is it possible to do functional programming in C, in Java, in assembly, in Ruby, or do you need a functional language? What is a functional language anyway? by The Eric Normand Podcast
19 min listen
Is Smalltalk a Functional language? Is Lisp Object-Oriented?: Alan Kay says there are only 2 Object Oriented languages that he knows of: Smalltalk and Lisp. The deeper I go into the history of Smalltalk, the more functional Smalltalk looks. by The Eric Normand Podcast
6 min listen
Build an interface around data: Clojure programmers often complain about data structures getting unwieldy and hard to understand. How can we prevent this? by The Eric Normand Podcast
15 min listen

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What is the closure property?: I discuss the closure property, which creates operations that can be nested. It's one thing that makes an API feel like a DSL. by The Eric Normand Podcast
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All about level three, algebraic modeling: What do I mean by algebra? And how do we get from level 0 to level 3? by The Eric Normand Podcast
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How do you make a function total?: It is easier to reason about total functions. And you can make any pure function total using three techniques! by The Eric Normand Podcast
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Why is making something first-class the key to expressivity?

Why is making something first-class the key to expressivity?

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from The Eric Normand Podcast