What FP Can Learn From Formal Languages: Towards a Leaner Syntax
summary
Argues that much syntactic overhead is accidental and shows concrete experiments: code in Haskell and Scala, property-based testing and example generation, graph-based diagrams, and a GitHub prototype that uses Scala 3 union types plus implicits to encode algebraic disjunctions. Demonstrates composing validators from string→address→shipment, recovering errors and preserving precise error unions, but notes JVM type-erasure, compiler totality quirks, and messy implicit lifting. Proposes embracing structurality and algebraic composition and treating terminals first-class to get DSL-like syntax without losing HKTs and parametricity.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:23Syntax in FP matters
- 3:34Types and grammar rules
- 9:26Algebraic encoding
- 15:54Live coding: Scala 3 Union types
- 31:55Debugging demo
- 54:48Error recovery with Union types
- 1:01:10Summary
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