From e4595e108f35403bf2981994630db604037c7575 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Chris Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 21:01:58 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] added Wordsworth --- topics/week5_simply_typed.mdwn | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 34 insertions(+) diff --git a/topics/week5_simply_typed.mdwn b/topics/week5_simply_typed.mdwn index fc7bfd27..68dbcf51 100644 --- a/topics/week5_simply_typed.mdwn +++ b/topics/week5_simply_typed.mdwn @@ -359,3 +359,37 @@ When we talk about monads, we will consider Montague's treatment of intensionality in some detail. In the meantime, Montague's PTQ is responsible for making the simply-typed lambda calculus the baseline semantic analysis for linguistics. + + +## Wordsworth on types + +Wordsworth wrote the following sonnet about the constraints of the +sonnet form in 1806, but he could have been writing about +strictly-typed programming languages. + +### Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room + +Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room +And hermits are contented with their cells; +And students with their pensive citadels; +Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, +Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, +High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, +Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: +In truth the prison, into which we doom +Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me, +In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound +Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; +Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) +Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, +Should find brief solace there, as I have found. + +This sonnet has an octave (the first eight lines, with rhyme scheme +abbaabba) followed by a sestet (cddccd). But the words apply to types +as well as to sonnets. "The prison into which we doom / Ourselves, no +prison is": as long as we get to choose the types of our expressions, +we can accomplish whatever we need to. Let anyone who wants to code +in the free 'verse of the untyped lambda calculus---but those of us +"who have felt the weight of too much liberty" will find solace in a +strictly typed language. + -- 2.11.0