Top all-time · #2394
Semantic Domain
Personal blog · semantic-domain.blogspot.comprogrammingmath
Semantic Domain is a personal blog at semantic-domain.blogspot.com about programming and math. Since 2013, 31 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “What Declarative Languages Are (2013)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- What Declarative Languages Are (2013)4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-02-07
- The golden age of PL research4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-09-15
- Thought Experiment: An Introductory Compilers Class3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-02-17
- What Declarative Languages Are2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-23
- The Relationship Between Static Analysis and Type Theory2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-08-25
- How to implement a spreadsheet2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-24
- Are functional programs easier to verify than imperative programs? (2018)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-04-30
What Hacker News says?
> I've pressed for details, and I've seen others do the same, but it never ends in anything concrete—just an implicit appeal to the new conventional wisdom that they do more harm than good. Really? Merits of the criticism aside (I don't know anything about compilers, so I'm not capable of judging), the received wisdom seems to be that the Dragon book spends far too much time on parsing and not enough time on other,…
Comment linking /2020/02/thought-experiment-introductory.html
on “Turing Award goes to Aho and Ullman”Submitted How to implement a spreadsheet as a story · 173 points
HN discussion> pretend that dynamically typed languages have no types whatsoever Indeed, everybody knows they have just one type (: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22dynamic%22+programming+la... https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/63533/untyped-vs-unit... https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2022/01/static-typing-v...
Comment linking /2022/01/static-typing-vs-dynamic-typing-vs-dana.html?m=1
on “Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language”Submitted Thought Experiment: An Introductory Compilers Class as a story · 96 points
HN discussion> declarativism I'm not familiar with that term. Could you give a rigorous definition? Anyway, after some googling, I found a very plausible definition that makes functional programming not a declarative paradigm: http://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-declarative...
Comment linking /2013/07/what-declarative-languages-are.html
on “Arguments against JSON-driven development”Submitted Every Finite Automaton Has a Corresponding Regular Expression as a story · 94 points
HN discussionHere's an answer to that: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-functional-programming-suited-f... Functional programming is also easier to mathematically verify than imperative: https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2018/04/are-functional-... While you might not do proof, languages and methods that are easier for proof are often easier for automated analyses that look for problems, too. There's tools out there that can check…
Comment linking /2018/04/are-functional-programs-easier-to.html
on “Correctness – A paradigm for sustainable software development”Submitted The Worm Ouroboros as a story · 44 points
HN discussionMaybe you should check out the Menhir parser generator instead. Some links: http://gallium.inria.fr/~fpottier/menhir/manual.pdf https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2015/11/error-handling-... https://baturin.org/blog/declarative-parse-error-reporting-w...
Comment linking /2015/11/error-handling-in-menhir.html
on “Parse, don’t type-check”Submitted What Declarative Languages Are (2013) as a story · 36 points
HN discussionEleven years on, this remains one of my favorite papers! There's a pretty variant of this idea introduced in 1995 by Valentin Antimirov called partial derivatives of regular expressions. His idea was to replace the single derivative with a set of partial derivatives that add up to the whole derivative. This simplifies the derivative algorithm quite a bit, and makes it possible to write amazingly concise and efficien…
Comment linking /2013/11/antimirov-derivatives-for-regular.html
on “Derivatives of Regular Expressions (2007)”Submitted Linear-Time Parser Combinators as a story · 4 points
HN discussionNice! I should've expected this could be that short, but I didn't. Here's my favorite approach to "rediscovering" efficient regex matching: https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2013/11/antimirov-deriv... It's implicit in the Thompson paper I linked above, but imo not obvious from it.
Comment linking /2013/11/antimirov-derivatives-for-regular.html
on “A Regular Expression Matcher (2007)”Submitted Are functional programs easier to verify than imperative programs? (2018) as a story · 4 points
HN discussion"Declarative" programming has become something of a buzzword. This is unfortunate because it prevents finer distinctions between domain specific language techniques. I think it achieved its buzzword status because it for a long time was something people clearly recognized but couldn't define. Fortunately, Neel Krishnaswami wrote a very cogent post putting his finger on the nerve. https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com…
Comment linking /2013/07/what-declarative-languages-are.html
on “Declarative Programming: Is It a Real Thing? (2015)”Submitted How to Implement a Spreadsheet as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAn article you might find helpful is this one on why imperative algorithms are harder to mathematically verify than functional ones: https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2018/04/are-functional-... You don't need to be a mathematician to follow it with this excerpt summarizing its key point: "The difficulty of imperative programming arises from the combination of state, aliasing and procedure calls. Any two of these…
Comment linking /2018/04/are-functional-programs-easier-to.html
on “Comparing Rust and JavaScript Ergonomics with a Simple Linked List”Submitted What Declarative Languages Are as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNeel Krishnaswami wrote a quite readable description of the proof on his blog: http://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/2014/06/g-ontological-ar...
Comment linking /2014/06/g-ontological-argument.html
on “Gödel's ontological proof”Submitted The Relationship Between Static Analysis and Type Theory as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI remember John Carlos Baez having some interesting stuff: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/ Some other ones I had bookmarked the other day but haven't seen much in depth, mostly computer science based but more towards theory/math side: https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/ https://semantic-domain.blogspot.com/ https://greydanus.github.io/ Also go to Terry Tao's blog and look at the sidebar, there are a lot…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are some interesting math and physics blogs you follow?”Submitted The golden age of PL research as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are functional programs easier to verify than imperative programs? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are functional programs easier to verify than imperative programs? (2018) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Declarative Languages Are as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Read Papers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Golden Age of PL Research as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Semantic Domain: The Golden Age of PL Research as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Golden Age of Programming Languages Research as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Five (and a Half) Derivatives in Language Theory as a story · 2 points
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