Here's the conclusion of the paper Wadler is referring to in this interview:

Proposition as Types informs our view of the universality of certain programming languages. The Pioneer spaceship contains a plaque designed to communicate with aliens, if any should ever intercept it. They may find some parts of it easier to interpret than others. A radial diagram shows the distance of fourteen pulsars and the centre of the galaxy from Sol. Aliens are likely to determine that the length of each line is proportional to the distances to each body. Another diagram shows humans in front of a silhouette of Pioneer. If Star Trek gives an accurate conception of alien species, they may respond “They look just like us, except they lack pubic hair.” However, if the aliens’s perceptual system differs greatly from our own, they may be unable to decipher these squiggles. What would happen if we tried to communicate with aliens by transmitting a computer program? In the movie Independence Day, the heroes destroy the invading alien mother ship by infecting it with a computer virus. Close inspection of the transmitted program shows it contains curly braces—it is written in a dialect of C! It is unlikely that alien species would program in C, and unclear that aliens could decipher a program written in C if presented with one. What about lambda calculus? Propositions as Types tell us that lambda calculus is isomorphic to natural deduction. It seems difficult to conceive of alien beings that do not know the fundamentals of logic, and we might expect the problem of deciphering a program written in lambda calculus to be closer to the problem of understanding the radial diagram of pulsars than that of understanding the image of a man and a woman on the Pioneer plaque. We might be tempted to conclude that lambda calculus is universal, but first let’s ponder the suitability of the word ‘universal’. These days the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum physics is widely accepted. Scientists imagine that in different universes one might encounter different fundamental constants, such as the strength of gravity or the Planck constant. But easy as it may be to imagine a universe where gravity differs, it is difficult to conceive of a universe where fundamental rules of logic fail to apply. Natural deduction, and hence lambda calculus, should not only be known by aliens throughout our universe, but also throughout others. So we may conclude it would be a mistake to characterise lambda calculus as a universal language, because calling it universal would be too limiting.

sleet

A podcast with transcript which may help explain fp to laymen.

A great talk by one of the greats to get the ball rolling in this new community.

I was looking into the prospect of deploying an instance of Lemmy myself. Being an ULTRA nix fanboi (and a Docker-hater), I was immediately struck by how much the process still depends on (and, IMO, is being held hostage by) Docker containers.

Can we (or at least someone more capable and with more free time than I) help the Lemmy community by harnessing the power of nix and flakes to create declarative, reproducible Lemmy scratch-built instance deployment?

I suspect it would be exceptionally easy for some of you out there. If you are a flakes power-user, just think of how much this could help the community (and perhaps awaken a few people to the power of flakes).

ps. if this already exists, please point me in the right direction.