7 ms·

This actually gladdens me instead of saddening. Monads are just a big can of giving your code implicit magic superpowers: a way to make write-only code that doe

This actually gladdens me instead of saddening. Monads are just a big can of giving your code implicit magic superpowers: a way to make write-only code that doesn't look like Perl. I would rather have my semi-colons good old unprogrammable no-ops than guess which monadic mess is behind them. Explicit is better than implicit.

mikorym 7y ago
R Shiny is another example of a reactive programming mess. I spent about 7 or 8 hours of trying to write a reactive program but for which the use case was actually straightforward (and I would have preferred to write it imperatively). My use case was basically filters: you have three dropdown lists that change based on the ones you select previously. Power BI and MS Excel filtering is good enough to solve the problem. I wonder if there is something written about how MS Excel handles filtering internally; maybe it is something like a directed graph?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > I wonder if there is something written about how MS Excel handles filtering internally; maybe it is something like a directed graph? Reactive programming is a directed graph underneath. Excel itself is a poster child of reactive programming. Speaking of reactive programming, what is the name of the "fuller" form that works on a proper graph, with loops, and can handle fixpoints? Constraint solving?
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    > Reactive programming is a directed graph underneath. Excel itself is a poster child of reactive programming. And I'm no more able to debug an Excel spreadsheet I didn't write myself than I am to debug a reactive program I didn't write myself.
  - mikorym 7y ago
    Great! This means that I was right when I mentioned to a co-worker that Excel (and its filtering) would have an intersting implementation underneath (from my category theoretic perspective). In fact, I am quite interested to understand the formalisms behind it. Do you know of any links or resources about this?

mikorym 7y ago

R Shiny is another example of a reactive programming mess. I spent about 7 or 8 hours of trying to write a reactive program but for which the use case was actually straightforward (and I would have preferred to write it imperatively). My use case was basically filters: you have three dropdown lists that change based on the ones you select previously. Power BI and MS Excel filtering is good enough to solve the problem. I wonder if there is something written about how MS Excel handles filtering internally; maybe it is something like a directed graph?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> I wonder if there is something written about how MS Excel handles filtering internally; maybe it is something like a directed graph? Reactive programming is a directed graph underneath. Excel itself is a poster child of reactive programming. Speaking of reactive programming, what is the name of the "fuller" form that works on a proper graph, with loops, and can handle fixpoints? Constraint solving?
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  > Reactive programming is a directed graph underneath. Excel itself is a poster child of reactive programming. And I'm no more able to debug an Excel spreadsheet I didn't write myself than I am to debug a reactive program I didn't write myself.
- mikorym 7y ago
  Great! This means that I was right when I mentioned to a co-worker that Excel (and its filtering) would have an intersting implementation underneath (from my category theoretic perspective). In fact, I am quite interested to understand the formalisms behind it. Do you know of any links or resources about this?