[Nix-dev] Anyone care to review my post on the Nix expression language?

[James Harrison Fisher]

Hey Colin,

Thanks for the praise. I concentrated a lot on laziness because I think it’s really critical to understanding how Nix works and is probably unfamiliar to everyone outside Haskell land.

You might be right about the "white lies” approach. It’s a tricky balance to get right — at one end an unfriendly formal specification; at the other, reader mistrust. :) I’ll try to tone it down.

Thanks very much,

James

On 8 Oct 2014, at 17:50, Colin Putney <colin at wiresong.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 5:00 AM, James Harrison Fisher <jameshfisher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Ellis! If there’s anything you didn’t enjoy, I’d love to know, since I’ll be writing more of these and I want to establish a style that people like. :-)
> 
> Awesome article.  I especially liked the gory detail on how expression trees are evaluated. I've been writing nix expressions for a few months and already knew most of the material you covered, but that section really made it clear how and why lazy evaluation works the way it does. 
> 
> The only thing I didn't enjoy was the "I lied" motif. Especially after the lazy-lists thing, it made me wonder if I could believe what I was a reading. The general technique of over-simplifying and then introducing layers of nuance is good, but I think you over-did it. 
> 
> I'm really looking forward to the next article!
> 
> -Colin

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