Hi, I'm AbstractKitty 🐱. I spend most of my time thinking about the mathematical
foundations of programming languages, specifically from the coalgebraic side of things.
While everyone obsesses over initial algebras and least fixpoints,
I'm firmly in the camp that thinks greatest fixpoints (νF)
deserve far more love — they're the natural home of infinite data, corecursion, and behavioural equivalence.
Currently a PhD student at a university in a very cold city. My dissertation is on
final coalgebra semantics for higher-order languages, trying to
figure out when and how you can give a compositional denotational account using
terminal objects in coalgebra categories.
The least fixpoint gets all the press because induction is friendly and familiar. But
coinduction is
dual — equally valid, equally beautiful — and it's the right tool
any time your data or behaviour is potentially infinite. Streams, processes, infinite trees…
these all live in νF, not μF.
In my free time I write Haskell that is too abstract for anyone to compile,
and Coq proofs that are too long for anyone to check. I also collect obscure domain theory papers.