Editing Philosophical Research:MediaWiki and functional programming (section)

== Templates and lambda calculus ==

There is a field of mathematics called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus  lambda calculus] — in practical terms this name approximately means "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus#lambdaAbstr function] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_(disambiguation) mathematics]". This field of mathematics is basically the practice of constructing everything in mathematics from functions, including booleans and integer numbers. With the correct [https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html mildly-frightening tree-branch figure] of functions, any function ever invented in other fields of mathematics can be reconstructed out of functions and calculated using the function tree and a few simple rules.

This is about what Templates have done to communication. A Template can contain almost anything. It is simply a name and a slot, like a lambda function, but whatever goes into the slot will come out in a particular presentation or go through other Templates inside, or branching paths of which things to show and hide. This makes Templates very powerful. A Template can practically turn into a small math problem full of simple propositions and beta reductions that interpret them. In practice it may be important to optimize computations by making sure Templates do not go too many levels deep, but at the same time, the number of computations that can safely go on in each Template is surprising. If you want Templates to [[Template:TTS|remove the confusion of putting links and Templates together]], with a little effort you can do it, and give a Template a <code>href</code> parameter in imitation of HTML links. If you feel like new users will be slightly overwhelmed by the HTML <code>cite</code> tag, you can create a Template that makes it a little easier, and also has the ability to [[Template:book|throw in the Item link associated with a book]]. Templates can redesign the whole paradigm of HTML the way it "really should have been". They can potentially make code more legible to screen readers. They can take the nonsense out of things, although only if the person writing them first has sense.