Chapter 1 — The Rigor Is the Engine

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A program is a stack of promises. The only question is who checks them: the author, at 3 a.m. — or the machine, before lunch.

— workshop wall

# 1.1 Two ways to be careful

There are two ways to write careful software.

The first is vigilance. The ritual is familiar. A function acquires a precondition that isn’t expressible in the type system — the buffer must be at least as long as the count, the handle must not already be locked, the table must still be sorted — so the author writes the rule down in the only places left: a comment above the definition, a naming convention, a README that everyone is sure to read.

Chapter 2 — First Words

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Data stack, data stack, does whatever a data stack does. Push a thing, push a thing, then a word consumes the two.

— workshop wall, after a hard day

# 2.1 The Practice

The Practice. Every word declares its effect on the stack, and the checker holds the body to the declaration — one term at a time, left to right, exactly the way the machine runs them.

Part I — Philosophy and the Medium on

Chapter 1 — The Rigor Is the Engine

# 1.1 Two ways to be careful

Chapter 2 — First Words

# 2.1 The Practice