Lambda the Ultimate

As a follow up to the previous post, check out how Chung-chieh Shan applied regions to a seemingly unrelated problem. His post begins by explaining how automatic (numerical) partial differentiation can be implemented, and goes on to show how to use regions to avoid mixing-up the variables being differentiated.

Java's enhanced-for loop means you don't easily know what item is currently used out of the collection when you stop in the debugger, because there isn't an index any more. (You can laboriously look for a matching reference value in the collection I guess.) Seems like use of functional approaches such as map() or filter() must 'suffer' from the same issue. Is it the case that debugging is very different than developing? The former seems to want to be able to reveal any and all information, the latter to hide as much as possible. Are there languages which somehow manage to do a great job at serving both masters?

Those of us not at ESSLLI 2008 might want to follow the action using the as usual excellent web site, which contains complete course materials.

Alas, it seems that this year less courses are directly relevant to LtU, but since both logic and linguistics tend to come up around here fairly often I am sure you'll find at least a couple of courses that will whet your appetite.