The Tyranny of Structurelessness
summary
Argues that adding a semantic layer — protocol-based DSL — makes Elixir code easier to reason about, reduces growth of complexity to sublinear, and lets pure-model tests stand in for distributed systems. Shows concrete code: a map proxy and an Agent-backed process DB, the exceptional error-handling pattern for bang functions, and a splits/unsplit DSL for parallel composition with swappable evaluation strategies (linear or async evaluation via tasks). Demonstrates these in libraries like witchcraft and shows they compose and test successfully.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:30Dijkstra
- 1:30Brooklyn Zelenka
- 3:15The big idea
- 7:33Code
- 10:23GoTo
- 15:10Complexity
- 21:33Abstract Mind
- 29:58Code Patterns
- 33:48Composing Properties
- 34:37Parallel Composition
- 36:01Function Composition
- 36:49Splits
- 37:22Split Layout
- 39:16Linear Data Structure
- 40:23Summary
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