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Boxbase
boxbase.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2015
Boxbase is a personal blog on programming language theory, type systems, logic programming, and software design, with some graphics work.
What HN saysHN links it for type theory explanations like Hindley-Milner and Chu spaces, and for its 2020 essay against OOP, which was popular on HN.
21HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
22stories submitted
683story points
12 months agolast shared
2015people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Case against OOP is understated, not overstated (2020)4 people · 467 points · first shared 2020 · 528 comments on HN
- 2Null references was a mistake, but what's the take-away?2 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 3Hindley milner2 people · first shared 2021
- 4Dialogical logic programming1 people · 90 points · first shared 2019 · 19 comments on HN
- 5Syntax is the last thing you should design1 people · 75 points · first shared 2017 · 73 comments on HN
- 6Easy text rendering with Vulkan1 people · 18 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 7Unix Hater's Handbook Stinks1 people · 9 points · first shared 2025 · 6 comments on HN
- 8Plan 9 on E-Paper1 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9Return to Plan 91 people · 4 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 10“Porting” of kapow to Plan 91 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 11Contradiction in Divide by Zero1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 12A Haskell programmer wrote a tris in PureScript1 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 13RISC-V can be fun if they don't mess it up1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 14How to read code: the next generation1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 15Relational Parsing, part 0, recognizer1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
nathanrf · 2024-06-25
The quoted paragraph is correct as written. E.g. if
f: ∀A, B. A -> B -> A
Then we have poly type π = "∀A, B. A -> B -> A".
The monotype μ = Str -> Int -> Str is a specialization of π, so we are also permitted to judge that f has type μ.
The type specialization operator "looks backwards", where we write sorta "π ≤ μ" because there's a kind of "subtyping" relationship (though most HM type systems don't actually contain subtyping) - anywhere that a term of type μ is used, a term of type π can be used instead because it can be specialized to μ.
I think this is a good complementary article: https://boxbase.org/entries/2018/mar/5/hindley-milner/ (it also links to three more academic sources for more context/detail)
DaiPlusPlus · 2024-02-01
I'll just leave this link right here: https://boxbase.org/entries/2020/aug/3/case-against-oop and wait for the lively informed debate to ensue...
(The article was a popular link when it was posted to HN back in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30293622)
adamnemecek · 2019-10-13
https://boxbase.org/entries/2019/jul/15/chu-construction/
Strings is the canonical example for Chu spaces.
marginalia_nu · 2022-02-02
Would you expect someone selling a product to give an accurate review? They have a conflict of interest. Give me a review from someone who does not have a conflict of interest.
I'll show you what I'm looking for:
https://labs.tomasino.org/mechanical-keyboards/
https://www.paritybit.ca/blog/vortex-vibe-keyboard
https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/Mechanical_keyboards
https://www.vegard.net/the-ultimate-keyboard-part-2-switches/
http://boxbase.org/entries/2015/nov/30/ergodox/
Where are those types of search results?
e12e · 2015-06-16
From some searching, this apparently is easier said than done[1] (read: there doesn't appear to be a way to guarantee that the decorator wouldn't break due to various meta-programming etc).
Relevant links:
The RPython sub-set used to implement pypy (and other languages on the rpython run-time) has a decorator for @always_inline, and does automagic inlining:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/pypy-commit/2014-November/086702.htm…
http://rpython.readthedocs.org/en/latest/translation.html#function-inl…
I'm not entirely clear on what is being governed by the pypy interpreter inline_trehshold -- if it's for both python code, or just for the interpreter:
http://pypy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/config/translation.backendopt.in…
http://boxbase.org/entries/2015/apr/20/rpython-jit-optimizations/
There's a project to do AST level optimizations at (bytecode) compile time:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/astoptimizer
There's been talk of using a decorator to allow for function inlining:
[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue10399