| 12 Dec 2025 |
 emily | with in fact multiple layers of monoidal structure (merging of module definitioms, overrides, and the individual option types and their merge operations) and where the definitions for some of the monoids involved are themselves part of the values the monoidal structure applies to and also these pervasively recurse into each other 🤪 | 13:32:58 |
| emily | I suspect the median NixOS user models each definition in their configuration modules as essentially imperative mutation of global state | 13:34:36 |
 teo (they/he) | the module system is a monster! but it is very convenient | 13:34:38 |
| emily | which works right up until it really doesn't | 13:34:53 |
| emily | it would be fun to see the module system modelled in Haskell including the part where you have mutually recursive options and config where the former define the types for the latter. I suspect you can pull it off with enough {-# LANGUAGE #-} | 13:37:04 |
 Arian | https://cuelang.org/docs/concept/the-logic-of-cue/ | 13:39:11 |
| Arian | imo cue comes pretty darn close | 13:40:57 |
| emily | isn't CUE explicitly dynamically-typed? | 13:48:20 |
| emily | I suspect Nickel might be doing something closer | 13:48:59 |
| Arian | Depends on what you mean with dynamically typed. It’s a lattice. So you can do static analysis by merging with an abstracter lattice | 13:51:34 |
| emily | (I know types-as-values/more general dependent typing can make this a fuzzy question already because you have type-checking recursing into evaluation, so for clarity I mean "you cannot type-check an expression with a free variable of known type but unknown value, right?" - but I could be wrong.) | 13:52:22 |
| Arian | the static-ness of a defintion is a nice partial order with types at the top and uninhabited values at the bottom. Slice the lattice was much as yo need | 13:52:23 |
| emily | right... I guess you can try evaluating by just setting the variable to its type. hmm... | 13:52:46 |
| Arian | yes… or to a static constraint | 13:53:03 |
| emily | IIRC CUE has limited control flow, right? I am not sure if the properties would scale to making it a "real PL" | 13:53:45 |
| emily | e.g. I don't see how you could typeck a recursive branching function in this way | 13:54:15 |
