Vanessa McHale's blog (18)
  • Matrix Algebra in Idris

    by Vanessa McHale | Programming

    I wanted to share a little example I came across while working on one of my Idris libraries. It's matrix multiplication, but from an angle you may not be used to. In particular, though it is written in Idris (a strict language), it composes as well arrays in Haskell or another lazy language thanks to dependent types.

  • Computing Catalan Numbers Using Dynamorphisms

    by Vanessa McHale | Programming

    I've been using Idris for a while, and today I stumbled into an example of a dynamorphism that worked so beautifully I had to share. It is a stellar example not only of dependent types but also the rĂ´le abstraction can play in writing correct code.

  • Performant Elgot Algebras

    by Vanessa McHale | Programming

    As you may have read in one of my past posts or elsewhere, performance across languages can be complicated, and it's not always as obvious as you'd expect.

  • Computing Continued Fractions With Apomorphisms

    by Vanessa McHale | Programming

    The modern theory of continued fractions comes from Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch physicist who invented the pendulum clock. Continued fractions turn out to be an especially elegant way of finding rational approximations of a number; this enabled him to design clocks with small gears that nonetheless provided the desired degree of accuracy.