This is the first part of a progress report on my attempt to model a process algebra as an expression rewriting machine. The process algebra in question is SubScript¹², which is an extension of ACP. It is recommended to familiarize yourself with ACP and process algebras before reading this article further.

In this article, I would like to analyse the architecture of Shapeless’ polymorphic functions and their inner workings.

Shapeless is a Scala library that aims to make programming more type-safe. This means that you let the compiler know as much as possible about your program, so that if something is wrong with it, it is more likely to be caught during compile time.

Suppose you have a fork of some GitHub repository. You have made some changes in it that fix multiple bugs and add some new features. Now you want to send your work to the main repository.

In SubScript, we have a possibility to use vals and vars in scripts. They are basically containers for data, just like Scala’s vals and vars, but they store their data in SubScript VM data structures.