Welcome! This is the first post on gradient ascent and also one that tests all +of the features.
+
I’ll be writing about computers, code, math, video games, and whatever else +here.
+++A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what’s the problem?
+
haskell?
+This entire blog is generated with hakyll. It’s +a library for generating static sites for Haskell, a purely functional +programming language. It’s a library because it doesn’t come with as many +batteries included as tools like Hugo or Astro. You set up most of the site +yourself by calling the library from Haskell.
+Here’s a brief excerpt:
+main :: IO ()
+main = hakyllWith config $ do
+ forM_
+ [ "CNAME"
+ , "favicon.ico"
+ , "robots.txt"
+ , "_config.yml"
+ , "images/*"
+ , "out/*"
+ , "fonts/*"
+ ]
+ $ \f -> match f $ do
+ route idRoute
+ compile copyFileCompilerThe code highlighting is also generated by hakyll.
++
why?
+Haskell is a purely functional language with no mutable state. Its syntax +actually makes it pretty elegant for declaring routes and “rendering” pipelines.
+I originally wanted to build this entire blog myself. I had a working version +with the Svelte framework, complete with GFM rendering, table of contents, KaTeX +math, code highlighting, static generation, and other goodies. However, it +seemed like a little too much work to maintain. I switched to hakyll because
+-
+
- Haskell is cool. +
- It comes with enough features that I don’t feel like I have to build +everything from scratch. +
- It comes with Pandoc, a Haskell library for converting between markdown
+formats. It’s probably more powerful than anything you could do in
nodejs. +It renders all of the markdown to HTML as well as the math. +-
+
- It supports KaTeX as well as MathML. I’m a little disappointed with the +KaTeX though. It doesn’t directly render it, but simply injects the KaTeX +files and renders it client-side. +
+
speaking of math
+We can have math inline, like so: +. This site ships semantic +MathML math with its HTML, and the MathJax script to the client.
+It’d be nice if MathML could just be used and supported across all browsers, but +unfortunately we still aren’t quite there yet. Firefox is the only one where +everything looks 80% of the way to LaTeX. On Safari and Chrome, even simple +equations like render improperly.
+Pros of MathML:
+-
+
- A little more accessible +
- Can be rendered without additional stylesheets. I just installed the Latin +Modern font, but this isn’t even really necessary +
- Built-in to most browsers (#UseThePlatform) +
Cons:
+-
+
- Isn’t fully standardized. Might look different on different browsers +
- Rendering quality isn’t as good as KaTeX +
This site has MathJax render all of the math so it looks nice and standardized +across browsers, but the math still displays regardless (like say if MathJax +couldn’t load due to slow network) because of MathML. Best of both worlds.
+Let’s try it now. Here’s a simple theorem:
+ +The proof is trivial and will be left as an exercise to the reader.
+seems a little overengineered
+Probably is. Not as much as the old one, though.