Re: Struggling to write Dissecting Guix, Part 2

[bokr@bokr.com]

Hi Simon,

On +2023-01-26 12:17:27 +0100, Simon Tournier wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2023 at 16:54, Wojtek Kosior via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> >                                                               here[1] is
> > the paper (written by someone at Microsoft, lol) where I found this
> > approach.
> 
> > [1] https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/150PLD/Papers/awkward.pdf
> 
> The author of [1] is Simon Peyton Jones [2].  One of the designers of
> the Haskell programming language and one of the main implementer of the
> Haskell compiler GHC.  And a great speaker and author. :-)
> 
> 2: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Peyton_Jones>
> 
> Cheers,
> simon
> 

Indeed, Simon Peyton Jones is tops.
You may be interested in this[3], if you have not seen it:

3: <https://simon.peytonjones.org/assets/pdfs/verse-conf.pdf>

From the introduction:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Functional logic languages have a rich literature, but it is
tricky to give them a satisfying semantics. In this paper we
describe the Verse calculus, VC, a new core calculus for
functional logical programming. Our main contribution is to
equip VC with a small-step rewrite semantics, so that we can
reason about a VC program in the same way as one does with
lambda calculus; that is, by applying successive rewrites to
it.

This draft paper describes our current thinking about Verse.
It is very much a work in progress, not a finished product.
The broad outlines of the design are stable. However, the
details of the rewrite rules may well change; we think that
the current rules are not confluent, in tiresome ways. (If
you are knowledgeable about confluence proofs, please talk
to us!) We are eager to enagage in a dialogue with the
community. Please do write to us.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
Some ideas to enrich guix or the guile language pagoda?

It is interesting that Epic Games has apparently funded quite a
collection of heavies to do some deep abstract thinking.
I imagine SPJ is enjoying discussions. Check the author list!

I got the link at [4] which is much snappier serving than it was
before. (It's a place to go if you are in the mood for something chewy ;)

It also has interesting programming language historical genealogy diagrams.

4: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/>

(I hope they get https going ;-)

--
Regards,
Bengt Richter