On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Adam Back wrote:
>
>Tim May writes:
>> This is the key question, no pun intended. A kind of language for
>> generating complex protocols was something Eric Hughes and I
>> discussed at length before even holding the first meeting of what
>> became the Cypherpunks group.
>
>SDL (Specification and Description Language) sounded interesting as a
>domain specific language for crypto protocols the specification of the
>crypto protocol would also be it's implementation.
Hmmm. Offhand I'd say there's no hope unless the language is
well-known to lots of people prior to this application of it.
As a long-time programmer in scheme, I can say from experience
that it is *IDEAL* for cipher work thanks to the built-in
extended numeric functionality - but nobody uses it because
nobody knows it.
If I were designing a system to use for encryption, key-tracking,
and the negotiation of protocols, and I were going to be doing all
the work, I'd use scheme. But if I expected other people to
contribute, I'd have to use C, or maybe Perl or a shell language -
something well-known.
Bear
