Hacker News: george_____t

New comment by george_____t in "Functional programmers need to take a look at Zig"

george_____t — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:22:36 +0000

> I don't understand why Zig's `Io` is a "monad".

I don't see how it's true in any meaningful sense. It seems about the same as stating that any function is an example of the reader monad.

The whole point of monads in programming languages is as an _abstraction_ that allows one to ignore internals like how the IO token is passed around.

Maybe Zig is a language for people who are scared of abstraction. Otherwise they'd presumably be using something more powerful like Rust.

New comment by george_____t in "Pandoc in the browser"

george_____t — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 22:43:37 +0000

Possible thanks to GHC's new WebAssembly backend.

Pandoc in the browser

george_____t — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 22:43:37 +0000

Article URL: https://pandoc.org/app/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46906468

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by george_____t in "Programming languages used for music"

george_____t — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 16:03:08 +0000

Just to add some context, Strudel is TidalCycles ported from Haskell to JS. IMO, Haskell is a much nicer language for this stuff. Hopefully, now that GHC can output WebAssembly, someone can build a web-based music programming environment around the original TidalCycles instead.

New comment by george_____t in "Show HN: New visual language for teaching kids to code"

george_____t — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 23:42:55 +0000

> even python might be too far from the CPU to be a good introduction to computing

That depends on what one considers to be the best way to introduce computing. I personally think kids are a lot less likely to be engaged by a bottom-up approach (start with "this is what hardware does") than a top-down approach (start with "you can make cool things with it").

New comment by george_____t in "Show HN: New visual language for teaching kids to code"

george_____t — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 23:23:05 +0000

> AIUI, in this case, the major issue is that it is very tempting to try to impose a constraint that all intermediate states the code passes through are semantically valid. However while superficially appealing this turns out to be a crippling constraint.

This really isn't much of an issue in a language with holes as a first class concept, like Agda or Haskell.

New comment by george_____t in "My views on NeoHaskell"

george_____t — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 23:53:17 +0000

It's quite frustrating to use a language that's so close to Haskell, but without being able to use all the libraries you're used to. And I think now that Haskell's own story for web frontend is improving, some of its appeal is fading.

Having used it in production for a while, tooling was poor, particularly IDE support, and anonymous records are in practice less of an obvious win than I expected. Plus I like laziness.

New comment by george_____t in "Learn Physics with Functional Programming"

george_____t — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 18:45:41 +0000

What's impractical about Haskell?

New comment by george_____t in "Leaving Haskell behind"

george_____t — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 21:39:14 +0000

It has been rapidly improving over the last few years, though this can mean it's difficult to keep up.

HLS (the LSP implementation) in particular is a pretty young project, and key compiler improvements which will help it improve are still landing.

New comment by george_____t in "Leaving Haskell behind"

george_____t — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 21:34:56 +0000

It's listed after Cabal as an "alternative", so a lot of people will presumably ignore it if they don't see any reason why they'd want anything else.

I personally wish that page were even more opinionated, but it's politically tricky.

New comment by george_____t in "Advanced Python Mastery"

george_____t — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 17:03:03 +0000

Python isn't the best language for exploring this sort of thing, by the author's own admission.

New comment by george_____t in "New horizons for SPJ"

george_____t — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 09:13:35 +0000

That Haskell forum is newish and isn't used much. There's more discussion on r/haskell.