This is a talk I gave at the yearly seminar of LMF in Étiolles, France, on June 13th, 2023.
Abstract
I have been asked to give an introduction to topology in computer science “for dummies”. I understand this as an introduction to my own view of topology, as seen through computer science, and I have decided to concentrate on the semantics of programming languages; more precisely, of pure, higher-order, probabilistic programming languages, with a focus on denotational semantics based on directed-complete partial orders (dcpos).
This will give me the opportunity to introduce some of the notions of domain theory, with a glimpse of topology, or of that bit of topology we need for the task. In the end, there will not really be much of topology in this talk, but I hope you can still get something out of it in terms of semantics of programming languages.
Slides
The full slides, with all animation steps (229 pages); the shorter presentation, without animation steps (72 pages).
Videos
In six parts:
- Introduction, topology, domain theory, Plotkin’s classic study of the language PCF (17:32)
- Probabilistic PCF, and continuous valuations (23:17)
- Continuous dcpos, a.k.a. domains (7:02)
- Statistical programming languages, and ISPCF (20:57)
- Commutativity, and Fubini-Tonelli theorems (15:07)
- Concluding remarks (7:06)
