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Poly-morphic effect handlers
In computer science, programmers often perform effects to interact with the surrounding environment. For example, a program may print strings or interact with mutable state. Then, effects may be handled, implemented in terms of other effects. In this post, we reconstruct a categorical semantics for programs with effects, and we isolate a class of composable effect handlers that may be concisely described in the language of polynomial functors, the free monad monad, and the Grothendieck construction.
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Recursive Types via Domain Theory
Functional programming languages often include recursive types, allowing programmers to define types satisfying a given isomorphism. Such types cannot all be interpreted as sets, but they can be understood using domain theory. We consolidate and present foundational techniques in domain theory to understand eager programming languages with recursive types from a categorical perspective. We define a category of domains with finite coproducts, a symmetric monoidal closed structure for eager products and functions, and least solutions of recursive domain equations, whose objects are retracts of a universal space and whose morphisms are continuous with respect to a topology of approximations.
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Serializing to JSON in SML/NJ
The SML/NJ standard library includes utilities for working with JSON. In this post, we outline the essentials and demonstrate simple usage examples.