Thursday, October 8, 2009

Functional Programming

Your brain is rolling along on that cold steel track of life. You process item after item, then list after list as if you were the building the chassis for a million robotic arms. Do this, then that, then this. Wake up, shower, go to work, go to lunch, come home, go to bed, rinse and repeat. Suddenly div/0, your brain stops and you forget every pattern that was pitted into your mind. The very wiring of the mind is a melted cacophony of cold snow and bloodied bird feathers. You know not who you are or what you are or why you are. Objects become functions and anonymous functions become parameters. Logic is modeled in actors passing messages. Actors mean nothing beyond what messages they pass. Cars on the highway become mail to mailboxes. Action and nonaction and not being. Colors become transformations yet to be decoded. You are what you do and nothing more. That is the primordial essence of the functional being.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Reading list

I am logging a reading list for myself. Most times, when reading something, the author references another work, so I want to log this list as a must read.

Joe Armstrong's doctoral thesis
Why do computers stop and what can be done about it. by Jim Gray