Building Languages to Solve Problems
When a problem is complex enough, the solution is often to build a language for that problem. SICP's most powerful idea.
Project
algebraic.mle
Algebraic maximum likelihood estimators
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SICP
Posts influenced by Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs—on abstraction, composition, and computation as a medium for expressing ideas
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman isn’t really about Scheme or even programming—it’s about computation as a medium for expressing ideas. The way they build up from simple primitives to interpreters to register machines fundamentally shaped how I think about abstraction and the layering of meaning.
These posts carry that influence forward: the closure property (combining things yields the same kind of thing), abstraction barriers, procedures as first-class citizens, and the deep insight that good abstractions come from understanding the algebraic structure of what you’re computing.
The book: Full text (free) | MIT lectures
Featured
Projects
Tools and libraries that embody this series' philosophy
algebraic.mle
Algebraic maximum likelihood estimators
accumux
Accumux
A modern C++ library for compositional online data reductions with mathematical rigor and exceptional …
likelihood.model
R package for specifying and using likelihood models for statistical inference. Provides a flexible framework for …
DAGShell - Directed Acyclic Graph Shell
A virtual POSIX filesystem with content-addressable DAG structure. Features immutable nodes, Git-style hashing, …
Posts in this Series
Showing 7 of 7 posts
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How Iterators Give You N+M Instead of N×M
The problem is combinatorial. You have N algorithms (sort, search, find, copy) and M containers (array, list, tree, hash table). The naive approach: implement each algorithm for each container. …
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algebraic.dist: Treating Distributions as First-Class Algebraic Objects in R
Most statistical software treats probability distributions as static parameter sets you pass to sampling or density functions. algebraic.dist takes a different approach: distributions are algebraic …
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Accumux: Compositional Online Statistical Reductions in C++
A modern C++20 library for compositional online data reductions with numerically stable algorithms and algebraic composition.
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jsonl-algebra: Production-Grade Relational Algebra for Nested JSON
A production-ready implementation of relational algebra for JSONL data with full support for nested structures. jsonl-algebra brings dotsuite's dotrelate concepts to production with streaming operations, schema inference, and composable pipelines.
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compositional.mle: SICP-Inspired Optimization
An R package where solvers are first-class functions that compose through chaining, racing, and restarts.
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Rerum: A Pattern Matching and Term Rewriting Library
Introducing rerum - a Python library for symbolic computation with a readable DSL, powerful pattern matching, and a security-conscious architecture that separates rules from computation.