Sometimes I run into things that I can tell have some serious power and usefulness - if only I could fully wrap my brain around them.
An early example in the computer realm for me is Lex & Yacc. Using them you could basically build your own grammar and your own language. I read the Oreilly book but never got over the hump to actually use them to do anything.
Today - it is Currying. In a nutshell, it allows you to take a method/function that requires more than one argument and make new versions that only require one argument.
The article that got me started was over at Shades of Gray
But in th eend he pointed to Murray which is an implementation that is even available as a gem.
It is interesting stuff. There are a few uses I can think of that fall outside of the “theoretical computer science” realm. Namely making it easier to build base functions with a number of arguments in a library and then using currying to build simple wrappers for a given project that always set certain defaults.
Consider this an oportunity to expand your brain before it is slowed by the weight of Tryptophan
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