Composition by Juxtaposition: A PostScript on Functional Geometry - Einar W. Høst
Channel: ScalaIO FR
Date: 10/02/2020

Composition by Juxtaposition: A PostScript on Functional Geometry - Einar W. Høst

Peter Henderson's "Functional Geometry" is a classic paper that shows the beauty and power of functional abstraction and composition. Using functions to represent pictures, Henderson defines a small set of combinators to create a replica of Escher's recursive tessellation "Square Limit". It's a nice kata for functional programmers. However, you could also implement Henderson's combinators effectively and elegantly in concatenative languages, where composition is nothing more than juxtaposition. In this talk, we'll look at an implementation in PostScript, a proven and battle-worn concatenative language that has been on the plateau of productivity for decades. It also happens to be rather good for drawing.