January 19, 2026
Building Languages to Solve Problems
When a problem is complex enough, the right move is to build a language for that problem. SICP's most powerful idea.
Sicp
Browse posts by tag
December 17, 2025
compositional.mle: SICP-Inspired Optimization
An R package where optimization solvers are first-class functions that compose through chaining, racing, and restarts.
December 16, 2025
Rerum: Pattern Matching and Term Rewriting in Python
A Python library for symbolic computation with a readable DSL, pattern matching, and a security model that separates rules from computation.
July 15, 2025
chop: When Every Command Returns the Same Kind of Thing
27 image commands, one constraint: read JSON, write JSON. The closure property as a generative design principle.
December 18, 2024
jsonl-algebra: Relational Algebra for Nested JSON
A command-line implementation of relational algebra for JSONL data with full support for nested structures, schema inference, and composable pipelines.
April 1, 2024
Apertures: A Language with Holes
When the problem is coordinating computation across parties who can't share data, the SICP move is to build a language for it. Apertures adds one primitive — holes — to a Lisp, and gets pausable, resumable evaluation for free.
March 1, 2024
Accumux: Compositional Online Statistical Reductions in C++
A C++20 library for composing online statistical accumulators with numerically stable algorithms and algebraic composition.
February 1, 2021
algebraic.dist: Distributions as Algebraic Objects in R
An R package that treats probability distributions as algebraic objects. They compose through standard operations. The algebra preserves distributional structure.
November 15, 2019
How Iterators Give You N+M Instead of NxM
Iterators reduce the NxM algorithm-container problem to N+M by interposing an abstraction layer, following Stepanov's generic programming approach.