Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Functional Approach to Dictionaries

Posted on September 10, 2025 by Bill Wadge

Dictionaries are extremely useful data objects. A dictionary is an associative store, basically a set of key-value pairs. A dictionary takes a key and returns the associated value. Python has dictionaries and the Python engineers have put a lot of … Continue reading →

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Functional OO in PyFL [130 views]

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Bill Wadge

For along time I thought about adding object-oriented features to PyFL but couldn’t figure out how. Classes and methods don’t seem to fit into the declarative model, where all objects are immutable. But then I stumbled on an answer almost … Continue reading →

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PyFL and its While Clauses [130 views]

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Bill Wadge

[This is another excerpt from the paper we were going to submit to ICFP 2025. Unfortunately it was immediately rejected because we included our names, contrary to the instructions that it is anonymous. Sigh] PyFL is a pure and lazy … Continue reading →

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The Yin and Yang of Programming [3000 views]

Posted on February 22, 2025 by Bill Wadge

[This is from a paper we’re submitting to the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2025)][update: the paper was rejected because we included our names, violating anonymity] Introduction Recursion and iteration are the Yin and Yang of programming. Conventional languages … Continue reading →

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The Root of all Evil- more sayings [210 views]

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Bill Wadge

“We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.” ~ Donald Knuth “Both women and computer science are the losers when a geeky stereotype serves as an unnecessary gatekeeper … Continue reading →

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“Computers are Useless” and Other Sayings [480 views]

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Bill Wadge

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” ~ Pablo Picasso “Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.” ~ Stan Kelly-Bootle Back then, the entire Internet consisted of two slow, boxcar-sized UNIVAC computers about 50 feet … Continue reading →

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Old Masters, New Technology

Posted on April 16, 2024 by Bill Wadge

Ive been looking at paintings a lot lately, and started to wonder, what would the old masters like Rembrandt make of new technology: trains, cars, TV etc? In particular, what would they make of computers and smart phones. How would … Continue reading →

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The complete story of Gödel incompleteness. [4200 views]

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Bill Wadge

The famous mathematician Kurt Gödel proved two “incompleteness” theorems. This is their story.

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The Rise and Fall of GOFAI [3000 views]

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Bill Wadge

Recently various pundits (including myself) have announced the end of Good Old Fashioned AI (GOFAI). But it has an impressive history, and encountered failure only on the verge of what would have been its greatest triumph. What is GOFAI? Some … Continue reading →

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The Autocomplete Myth [ 180 views]

Posted on April 6, 2023 by Bill Wadge

AI naysayers often disparage chatGPT by dismissing it as a glorified autocomplete. Supposedly it repeatedly computes the next likely word and selects it at random based on weighted probabilities. I don’t believe it.

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