Talks to Watch

John Wiegley: Putting Lenses to Work

13K views · Apr 22, 2017 · 47:19 · 4 HN recommenders · 5 mentions · discussed 2020–2024

John Wiegley's BayHac 2017 talk walks through Haskell lenses by example, showing many practical uses beyond simple record access. It is aimed at people who want to become productive with the lens library.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN recommends it as the fastest way to learn lenses by example, with far-out examples later on.

“you can learn enough lens to be productive in 1 hours with this talk without reading docs at all”HN comment, 2020

What Hacker News said 5

Strongly recommendsplatzJun 2020

“you can learn enough lens to be productive in 1 hours with this talk without reading docs at all”

Learn enough lens usage to be productive in an hour.

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and you can learn enough lens to be productive in 1 hours with this talk without reading docs at all. You can skip the theory and go straight to usage: this video

in “Haskell for a New Decade [pdf]” · view on HN
Strongly recommendsturboponyyJul 2024

“serves as a great introduction by example”

Great introduction to lenses by example, with humorous audience.

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As with anything Haskell, one could simply reply with "here's the formal definition." But in easily digestible terms, it's a way to narrow your view over a collection to a subset that satisfies some property, and perhaps perform some operations on that subset. This video presentation (with a very humorous audience dynamic, might I add) serves as a great introduction by example: this video

in “Ask HN: What resources do you recommend for learning Haskell?” · view on HN
RecommendsParetoOptimalJun 2022

“Good examples in "Putting lenses to work" by John Weigley”

Good examples of lens usage.

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Good examples in "Putting lenses to work" by John Weigley: this video Then for a great book that gives a great understanding see Chris Penner's amazing and fun "Optics by example: link

in “Dhall: A Gateway Drug to Haskell” · view on HN
RecommendsParetoOptimalJun 2022

“More are in this presentation”

More examples of lenses beyond record access.

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> Lenses let you do some amazing things, but I think most of their existence is just thanks to how truly horrible (nested) record field access and updates were. Only for the most basic uses. Architecting programs as folds or traversals can be powerful. One simple example of lenses i can think of being useful for more than record access is: > sumOf (folded . folded) [Just 1, Just 2] 3 More are in this presentation: this video

RecommendslgasNov 2022

“I would also recommend as a good video on lenses”

Good lens video with far-out examples in the later portion.

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Definitely agree on lenses being one of the more mind blowing things I've encountered and eventually grokked in programming. I would also recommend this video as a good video on lenses in part because the latter portion has some pretty far-out examples of that deep well you mentioned.

in “Ask HN: What piece of code/codebase blew your mind when you saw it?” · view on HN