samskivert: Implementing First-Class Polymorphic Delimited Continuations by a Type-Directed Selective CPS-Transform – Rompf, et al.

03 October 2010

I think it’s been six months since I read this paper, but I kept thinking that I had already written a note about it in my blog. I must have shifted that computation into a delimited continuation and then forgotten to call the continuation, so it never got executed. Ah, computer science humor.

Continuations (delimited or otherwise) can quickly make code incomprehensible, as the examples in this paper so nicely demonstrate. However, used in a disciplined manner, they can do some very nice things, including distributed computing, improved UI APIs and reactive programming.

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