pattern matching...everywhere?

04 Oct, 2023

Pattern matching is so ubiquitous in life.(?)(!)¹

math and probability problems as you're trying to understand the flavor of the question,

learning the intricacies of a new languages both spoken and coded,

familiarizing yourself with the patterns of new york under your feet and getting better at navigating this city by transit the longer you live here, ("oh you can just take the F til Broadway-Lafayette and make a transfer to the 6, or the Q from DeKalb works too, ooo or Borough Hall 4/5 always an option–")

literally pattern matching as you write out Haskell code,

leetcoding and applying the data structures and algos you've learned in days past to see what would optimally solve this fun little problem,

living out our lives trying to discern wisdom by matching to what we've experienced in the past?

Aug 10, 2024 ---

writing up a new test in a language you've never seen by grepping tons of past examples to find how to write it idiomatically,

noticing the witty references the film you're watching makes as a homage to its rich heritage preceding it,

cooking some new dishes and trying out new flavors by indexing on equivalents you've tried in the past that would work similarly,

Mar 4, 2025 ---

learning the 한자 behind all the Korean words you've been learning and realizing they're just all using the same Chinese characters all along

crossing domains to see that distinctions between disciplines is just arbitrary, we all just contain one whole body of knowledge that can all tie together - literature to computer science, law to software engineering, philosophy to cooking

Biblical theology

funny that a functional programming concept from my freshman fall CS class that I dismissed as entirely unnecessary has, in the most ironic fashion, become a pattern that I've matched to again and again.

in living document fashion, maybe the more patterns I notice over time, the longer this list will grow.