You are right of course, debuggers, particularly for managed languages where the debugger can always know what it's looking at, do present such a high-level view. At the same time I can't shake the feeling that this isn't quite the representation I'm looking for, but I can't yet put my finger on exactly why.
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Abram Demski <[email protected]> wrote: > Russel, > > Well.. this might be a fairly shallow observation, but debugging tools are > precisely that: they present execution to humans in a format which is > hopefully useful for high-level reasoning. > > Best, > > Abram > > On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Russell Wallace < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> The best representation of code depends on what you want to do with >> it. For efficient execution, you want machine code, or byte code that >> can be easily translated into machine code. If you want to reason >> about the code, however, it's better to use a tree or graph format >> (e.g. Lisp s-expressions). >> >> I'm currently looking at the problem of enabling heuristics to watch >> the execution of code (e.g. in order to notice when a search seems to >> have gone off down a blind alley so as to reset it with different >> parameters). This entails finding a representation of a snapshot of >> the current state of execution. Much less work has been done on this, >> and such as I'm familiar with, tends to be on the efficient execution >> end e.g. virtual machines that can dump the current state of memory >> and CPU registers; recovery of structure from that kind of flat format >> would be very difficult. >> >> Anyone know of any previous work on representations of execution >> snapshots suitable for high-level reasoning? >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> AGI >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/7190161-766c6f07 >> Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com >> > > > > -- > Abram Demski > http://lo-tho.blogspot.com/ > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/1658954-f53d1a3f> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
