Pierce Darragh
pdarragh.bsky.social
Pierce Darragh
@pdarragh.bsky.social
he/him/his. PhD student in computer science at UMD known for bad food takes. CS interests in PL, CS Ed, SE, and HCI.

Mastodon: https://types.pl/@pdarragh
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Launching my Programming Language Pragmatics talks! These short, accessible talks cover the material in the textbook, the 5th edition of which I wrote with Michael L. Scott. The first one introduces the topic and talks about why we study programming languages!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwL0...
PLP 1.1: Introduction to Programming Languages
YouTube video by Jonathan Aldrich
www.youtube.com
August 6, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
If you're interested in editors and developer tools, consider applying to Jane Street! It might be an especially good fit if you're an excited vim or vscode user who would love working on making those experiences better for a den of functional programmers.
May 7, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
I don’t know man, what could it possibly be?
May 5, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
I have tariffed
the penguins
that are on
Heard Island

and which
you were probably
assuming
did not export goods

forgive me
they were taking advantage of us
so cunning
and so cold
April 3, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Xiaofeng Wang, a longtime computer science professor at Indiana University, has disappeared along with his wife, and their profiles on the school's website were wiped ahead of recent FBI raids.
Cybersecurity Professor Mysteriously Disappears as FBI Raids His Homes
Xiaofeng Wang, a longtime computer science professor at Indiana University, has disappeared along with his wife, and their profiles on the school's website were wiped ahead of recent FBI raids.
wrd.cm
March 31, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
All this is true, but the new code *won't* be a perfect replacement. It'll just be broken and buggy relative to the current system, miss a bunch of edge (or common) cases, and they'll just yell at anyone who says "doesn't work for me"—especially the poor, indigent, un-shiny mass of real humans.
So, the DOGE kids intend to rewrite the social-security administration's COBOL code-base!

and they want to do it ...

... in *a few months*

I did a huge dive into COBOL a few years ago (www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazi...) ...

... so let me explain why DOGE is *way* over its skis here

1/9
browse by category
www.wealthsimple.com
March 30, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
We will not be distracted.
We will not be discouraged.
We’ve got our eyes on the prize.

And we will build the prosperous, free nation for all that we deserve.

The time to organize is now.

OcasioCortez.com
March 28, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Tonight an unbelievable **34,000 people** gathered for our Denver rally to take on billionaires and win our country back.

This was the largest political gathering in Denver since Obama in 2008.

Also bigger than the 2024 DNC.

And the largest ever rally in Bernie’s career (and obviously, mine too).
March 22, 2025 at 1:29 AM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Inside Racket Seminar

The Inside Racket seminar seeks to expose the internal design and implementation of Racket features. It features Racketeers give a low-level walkthrough of the code that implements an important Racket feature. 1/3
March 20, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Panchanathan is a Fellow of the ACM and seems pretty clearly to be violating the ACM's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. It would be great for the organization to stand up and take remedial action.
🧪 The NSF director is lying to you.

Let’s fact check 7 claims from yesterday’s letter to the community, while pointing out 3 critical omissions. 🧵
March 12, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
NEW: A searing editorial in the The Kyiv Independent.

“It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war. The American people have not, and they should speak up.

“A president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasn’t Zelensky.”

@kyivindependent.com
Editorial: A president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasn’t Zelensky
It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war. The American people have not, and they should speak up. In the past several weeks, the U.S. leadership has demonstrate...
kyivindependent.com
February 28, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
american masculinity is so amazing. caring about clothes as a man apparently makes you "gay" but our position on geopolitics totally depends on whether you wear a suit
March 1, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Do you want to compile OCaml to Wasm? We have you covered: tarides.com/blog/2025-02...

This includes support for effect handlers: ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/...
The First Wasm_of_ocaml Release is Out!
Discover what's new with the release of Js_of_ocaml 6.0.1 – including Wasm support!
tarides.com
February 22, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
“MaYbe shE’s goiNg to be in TroUble nOw”

Maybe he can learn to read. The Constitution would be a good place to start
Tom Homan says he sent an email to the Deputy AG asking if AOC is crossing the line by providing webinars to undocumented immigrants: I’m not an attorney… maybe AOC is going to be in trouble now
February 14, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
looking back, AOL had it right. 30 hours of internet per month was the right amount.
February 13, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
you fucked up a perfectly good computer is what you did. look at it. it's got innumeracy
February 12, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Has anyone ever heard of a live programming system that uses the types of dynamic values to feedback into static analysis?
February 12, 2025 at 6:25 PM
@dherman.dev hello, can I please bother you for a copy of your dissertation? all the links I've found are dead, but based on the citations I think it's relevant for something I'm thinking about!
February 7, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
I am potentially interested in hiring a postdoc to work on declarative decompilation, I was going to hire someone else but it feel through when they got another offer they took for personal reasons, looking for someone who wants to publish in security, PL venues with me
January 22, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
There's no better demonstration of the astonishing breadth of human experience than coming across someone actually, sincerely typing out a post that includes the statement that there is in fact no humor whatsoever to be found in the Murderbot books.
January 5, 2025 at 4:23 PM
kind of agree with this, except I think identifiers and code comments are each separately part of some third category (maybe "syntactic encoding of pragmatics"?)
variable names *are* code comments
December 23, 2024 at 8:43 AM
Reposted by Pierce Darragh
Captivating interview with @harrisongoldste.in by the
Haskel Interlude podcast focusing on his work on property based testing. Amazing hearing about "deparsing", going from a value to a sequence of actions that create the value. Hardware engineers are very familiar
haskell.foundation/podcast/59/
Harry Goldstein
Sam and Wouter interview Harry Goldstein, a researcher in property-based testing who works in PL, SE, and HCI. In this episode, we reflect on random generators, the find-a-friend model, interdisciplin...
haskell.foundation
December 17, 2024 at 2:40 PM