miniblog.

I've been learning some Common Lisp by writing some simple JSON munging programs. I'm sure it's not best practice — I should probably deserialise to CLOS automatically — but it's a nice way to get comfortable with the basics. It feels weird deliberately ignoring helpers though.

I'm having fun writing a simple type checker, but I'm learning firsthand why syntax-directed checking doesn't work. It prevents inference. My checker catches real bugs, but it can't handle cases like this: [1, 2].map(fun(x) { x + 1; }) I think I need bidirectional checking.

I'm trying to decide what program I should show on the home page of my PL. Hello World is too simple to show much syntax. Fibonacci is OK but the reader may not know what print(fib(10)) should show. Maybe print(greet("World")) is better? It gives you a function definition at least.