Lambda the Ultimate

Knitting is the process of creating textile surfaces out of interlocked loops of yarn. With the repeated application of a basic operation – pulling yarn through an existing loop to create a new loop – complicated three-dimensional structures can be created [4]. Knitting machines automate this loop-through-loop process, with some physical limitations arising from their method of storing loops and accessing yarns [1, 3]. Currently, knitting machines are programmed at a very low level. Projects such as AYAB [2] include utilities for designing knit colorwork, but only within a limited stitch architecture; designers working in 3D usually do so via a set of pre-designed templates [4].

From Lea Albaugh, James McCann, "Challenges Facing a High-Level Language for Machine Knitting", POPL2016.