ezyang’s blog

the arc of software bends towards understanding

Programming Languages

Practical Foundations for Programming Languages (first impressions)

Robert Harper has (somewhat) recently released a pre-print of a book (PDF) that he has been working on, Practical Foundations for Programming Languages. I downloaded a copy when it initially came out, but I was guilty of putting off actually digging into the book’s 590-some pages. It was only until Harper successfully baited me with […]

  • August 15, 2012

Managing the server/client split in Ur/Web

The holy grail of web application development is a single language which runs on both the server side and the client side. The reasons for this are multifarious: a single language promotes reuse of components that no longer need to be reimplemented in two languages and allows for much more facile communication between the server […]

  • July 25, 2012

How Ur/Web records work and what it might mean for Haskell

Ur is a programming language, which among other things, has a rather interesting record system. Record systems are a topic of rather intense debate in the Haskell community, and I noticed that someone had remarked “[Ur/Web has a http://www.impredicative.com/ur/tutorial/tlc.html very advanced records system]. If someone could look at the UR implementation paper and attempt to […]

  • April 20, 2012