Posts tagged continuations

Algebraic effects are kind of like exceptions that you can resume from. They can be used to express computational effects like non-determinism, generators, multi-threading, and of course, exceptions. They are a slightly less confusing alternative to using raw continuations via operators like call/cc and have other benefits like dynamic interpretation.

In this post, we will discover and implement algebraic effects using continuations in Racket. I will assume you are familiar with Racket and continuations. If you’re not, I have the perfect post for you!

call/cc is a powerful tool for implementing custom control forms operators. However, call/cc can be pretty unwieldy, so people tend to use delimited, composable continuations with operators like reset and shift. But what if I told you that these operators can be implemented using just call/cc?

In this post, we’ll implement delimited continuations, composable continuations, dynamic-wind, and parameters all from just call/cc. I will assume a solid familiarity with continuations and Racket. If you aren’t very familiar, then feel free to check out my continuations post to get some background. But even having read that, you sould play around with them a lot to get familiar, because this post is pretty heavy on continuation weirdness!

Continuations are a powerful tool that allow you to implement control flow constructs like exceptions, generators, and multi-threading, and back tracking as libraries. That’s right, libraries! In a programming language that gives access to continuations, these features don’t have to be baked into the implementation of the language. In this post, we will explore what continuations are, how to use them, and how to implement them in a programming language as a pre-processing step.