On Nov 21, 2007, at 11:57 AM, Warren DeLano wrote:
From what I understand, LOLA should eventually enable a developer to
work effectively with all of the above syntax flavors (and many
others)
on top of a common object/execution model, without the fuss of SWIG
nor
the crushing weight of a JVM or CLR runtime.
That's the idea. We should be able to go beyond even domain-specific
languages, to what I've been calling 'mood-specific languages'. If it
makes my (e.g.) message-passing code more readable to be able to write
'x[y,z]' instead of '(x at: y) at: z' during a three-line region of my
program in the middle of some function or method, I want to be able to
instantiate my new syntactic convention for just those three lines of
code. It'll certainly not look anything like this...
`push-syntax expr += expr-1[expr-2,expr-3]
-> ((expr-1 at: expr-2) at: expr-3) ;
c[i,k] = a[i,j] * b[j,k].
`pop-syntax expr
but the closer we can get to the spirit of the above, the better.
(IMO, the CLR's biggest mistake was that it wasn't written in itself.)
what sorts of things can
and should someone like me do to help bring an archicture like this
forward as soon a possible?
Generate requirements; prove (or disprove ;-) the concepts. Experiment
with building things using the system as it evolves to identify
faults and
weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. Identify strengths
that can
be generalised or extrapolated further within the system. Think about
how to improve the programming/user interfaces to components in the
system -- especially things that haven't been widely investigated like
extensible syntax. Look for similar concepts/facilities that are
disjoint
and consider how/why they might be unified. Create endless scenarios
along
the lines of: "Wouldn't it be great if I could write this <...insert
cool
example...> because <...insert compelling use-cases...>". Try to
identify
all the itches you couldn't scratch in other systems, and then try to
image
how an ideal system might let you scratch them (or make them
disappear or
just irrelevant).
Cheers,
Ian
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