In a famous paper published in 1998, Philip Wadler complained that no one used functional programming languages. It is safe to say that in 2026 everybody is using some kind of functional programming language, albeit to a certain extent, but the underlying reason for this spread had more to do with fashion and hype...

If there was a contest for the single most beloved person in the functional programming galaxy, Joe Armstrong would have effortlessly won the first prize. For decades, he constantly showed the world that the principles behind functional programming were the key for resilient, concurrent, and highly available...

Imagine a world in which two people take the best ideas from programming languages, and create an interpreter for their own programming language. Then they demonstrate that most of the features in that programming language—indeed, in all programming languages—can be constructed out of just three features of their...

On page 138 of the second edition of his 1971 book, “Categories for the Working Mathematician”, American mathematician Saunders Mac Lane inadvertently coined one of the most famous memes ever made around programming. It is there, precisely there, and not anywhere else, where the phrase “a monad in X is just a monoid...

Welcome to the 92nd issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Linux. In this edition: Graham reports on the state of GNU Hurd with very good news. Adrian untangles the Linux distro jungle and helps you choose the best one for your needs. In our Vidéothèque section, we watch “The Code” by Hannu Puttonen. In the Library...

Those of us who have been extremely online for a very long time will remember that Linus Torvalds announced his Linux kernel to a usenet newsgroup (or “froup”, as the internet lexicon had it at the time) for the Minix operating system. Minix is a Unix-like operating system that Andrew S. Tanenbaum created to teach...

The Non-Aligned Movement was born in 1961, during the most dramatic period of the Cold War, in opposition to the nuclear escalation threats between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Countries from what it is now known as the “Global South” got together to figure out ways to help each other in a period of great turmoil....

Paraphrasing Apple and their famous advertising campaign, we can safely say that Finnish movie director Hannu Puttonen (1960–2023) was very interested in the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. He made a living telling their...

Many autobiographies of famous people involve a certain amount of ghostwriting, if the subject and alleged author is not a professional writer. An actual writer listens to their stories, interviews them, maybe gets them to draft some anecdotes or chapters, then works all of that up into a narrative that a potential...

There was a time before eBooks, when developers had to buy actual massive paper editions of the most precious titles in their craft, and in some case, they had to carry them around, either for work or (also possible) for pleasure. In this particular case I have to say that I am happy to own the digital version of...

Welcome to the 91st issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Entertainment. In this edition: Graham reviews the beautiful art taking place in the demoscene. Adrian argues that we are just blinded by entertainment. In our Vidéothèque section, we learn about the demoscene thanks to L33T GUY, and then we watch the first...

You are deep into fixing a bug where the customer wants to view entries in a report in a different order, but calling the method to sort the array turns on the sprinkler system in your on-premise server room for reasons that nobody can recall (or diagnose). It is at this moment that it is hardest to remember that...