It is time to publish some more results. Type-level reasoning A function application - corresponds to /Modus Ponens/ A specialization, an instance of it. > ($) :: (a -> b) -> a -> b > ($) f x = f x Reversed order of agreements, still the same /Modus Ponens/ > (|>) :: a -> (a -> b) -> b > (|>) x f = f x "Multi-argument" is just /currying/ -- ~* ->*->*-> *~ Same, but with an explicit /abstraction barrier/ (and /lifting/) > (>>=) :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b > (>>=) ma f = undefined -- has to be defined for each particular type (an instance) Notice that this is essentially a type-signature of ~fmap~, > fmap :: f a ->(a->b) -> f b with a reversed order of arguments and a specialized function. which corresponds to a /Kleisli arrow/. Notice also that ~($)~ and ~fmap~ differs only in having an explicit /container/. This is not an arbitrary coincidence. All three are essentially the same, despite funny syntax. A basic step of logical deduction. Behind an abstraction barrier. Composition - of functions > (.) :: (b -> c) -> (a -> b) -> a -> c > (.) f g = \x -> f (g x) - of "actions" (actual functions have to use ~return :: a -> m a~) > (<=<) :: Monad m => (b -> m c) -> (a -> m b) -> a -> m c > (<=<) f g = undefined -- has to be defined for each particular type or ~(>>=)~ for chaining ("flat" nesting or pipelining ) , exactly the same as ~(|>)~ Notice that the composition is /nesting/. This is the /only/ way to implement it. The end of knowledge.

Python is eating the word. When I type “Python” on the Library Genesis search prompt I’m getting some 300 pages (7628 files found | showing results from 1 to 25). This has to be bullshit. Arguably, the mass hysteria has started when MIT switched from the classic MIT Scheme to Python as its main teaching language. The AIMA code at Berkeley has been ported from Common Lisp to Python at about the same time. ...

The LLM mania is still going on, with no sign of bursting of the bubble. This will be (already is) way larger than even the DotCom bubble. Grab your popcorn. I already wrote this on the old site, and, of course, because I haven’t followed the rules I got “canceled” as they do nowadays with anyone who disagree with their current set of beliefs. Lets talk it again, even with millions of views behind each Karpathy or Friendman videos. ...

I created for myself the meme Going Full Gogans (you know) which is, literally, what one should do in order to achieve anything slightly above mediocrity. To go “higher” one has to Go Full Steppenwolf. which means to fully embrace and stick to the classics, ignoring everything “modern” as one ignores “user-defined genders and pronouns”. By “classics” I mean just a few distinct well-established traditions and related cultures. The LISP tradition, with distinct MIT Scheme, Norvig and Graham books, and later Clojure cultures. The CLU and of Barbara Liskov tradition and a related subculture based on the books. The ML tradition, with SML, Ocaml, F#, Scala (reaction to Java – the monument to human stupidity) cultures. The Miranda and Haskell, tradition and all the one-man’s pure language subcultures and books. The Erlang tradition (principle-guided, well-researched commercial successin telecoms). The GNU Emacs tradition, can be traced back to the sanity of the MIT CSAIL. The Python tradition of attention to details and of striving to do things just right (for an interpreter). The Go tradition (Bell labs, Plan9, UTF-8, Inferno, the Go standard library, C.A.R Hoare concurrency primitives). The Ada tradition, as of an academic imperative language – sane and “safe”. The Rust tradition, as the reaction to the C++ – humiliation to the human intelligence. Except for Rust, which is too new, the above mentioned constitute the Golden Age of Programming (forever lost). ...

Trying to understand complex social systems was my favorite timepass. I went through Eastern philosophy and religions. algorithmic trading, Informix system administration and functional programming. of course. I am a FreeBSD and Gentoo addict too. I almost always compile my stuff from sources (so I know all the dependencies by heart). In particular, Eastern Philosophy (the Early Upanishads and Early Buddhism) helped me to sort out what the current AI tools can achieve and what they cannot do in principle (and I showed why). This is my major achievement so far. ...

You probably have already read things like “Async computations form a Monad” or something like that. Did you ever ask yourself why would they? Here are the answers for you. Have you ever seen that kind of device in some chemical and physics labs – a glass wall, with two holes in it which have a pair of thick gloves attached to them, to reach inside? A person put his hands into these gloves and reach into a contained and sealed compartment (environment) and is able to perform some tasks, like moving and filling things inside. ...

Once one has been exposed to a wrong concepts or just bullshit it is very difficult to unlearn what is “already known” and to see things as they really are. Especially when a necessary abstraction barrier is neglected or not even well-understood and some implementation aspects are mixed arbitrary with definitions of an abstraction itself, and with parts of a supposedly abstract interface, which has to form (establish) the abstraction barrier. ...

Lets talk about something really hard. There are at least 3 whole asynchronous, concurrent “full stacks” on top of the Java Runtime written in Scala (which compiles to the JVM bytecode and its standard library is a wrapper around Java’s). The first one, arguably the most widely used. is the Twitter’s platform. Then comes Lightbend (formerly Typesafe), and then stack upon which Spark has been built. The most amazing thing is that vastly complex codebases, like Twitter “it just works”. Not just that, but everything has been open-sourced and the development continues open to literally everyone to see or even participate. Simply amazing. Here is why. ...

The great programmers of the past, who wrote the fortran numeric libraries, lets say, drew flow-charts for every procedure they are about to write. This gave them the right intuitions and the right feeling about what they do. At the level of expressions you have just (only) recuring 3 patterns - it will be either a sequence, a conditional (branching) or a loop (recursion), so when they begin to write the code, they were never confused – it has to be one of these. ...

There are already several websites which publish a “roadmap” of how to teach yourself programming (University keve) using freely available courses and textbooks. Here is my 2 cents. First of all, SICP is an advanced textbook. It is by no means suited for teaching freshmans, unless you are a MIT student, who is math-lover and a “slow thinker”. Brian Harvey, the great, managed to teach the CS61A at Berkeley – a SICP-based course which goes at a slow pace. He gave exceptional, state-of-the-art lectures, along with printed lecture notes. This is the only good start. ...