Thanks for your reply! Some comments below. On Oct 14, 2010, at 7:50 PM, John Zabroski <johnzabro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Casey, > > Let's cut this email you wrote into two ideas. > > it makes me wish I had some time to study prolog. > > Why don't you have time to study prolog? What does the word "study" even > mean here? Ah; sorry. I should back up. Assertions in tests when viewed from a particular perspective look a lot like rules/questions in Prolog. I have a hunch that Prolog has some secret alien technology that testers in the large are mostly unaware of, but I could be wrong. I need to understand Prolog to be certain. I sit presently with a nice porter and a book called "Programming in Prolog" which I found for a couple of dollars at a second hand book store a few blocks from here. As far as time is concerned, that's quite simply: slapping some lipstick on the pig and running it out the door "in the large" winds up being ridiculous working hours sometimes. > > I wonder: what if all we did was write the tests? What if we threw some kind > of genetic algorithm or neural network at the task of making the tests pass? > > > You should read Robert Binder's book on testing. Oh! I will make an effort to hunt it down. There are lots of books on testing, but very few really good ones; thanks for the recommendation! > I don't understand why the people you talk to say it's not possible. In the large, if it isn't either "news" (read: I read on Slashdot that people are starting to use Javascript on the server with this thing called Node.js) or "best practice" (read: dogma,) you're crazy, naive, stupid, or wasting valuable company time. In their defense, no one has said "impossible," it's been more like "waste of time." > I realize that there are some challenges with the idea: what's the DNA of a > computer program look like? Compiled methods? Pure functions? Abstract syntax > trees? Objects? Classes? Prototypes? Source code fragments? How are these > things composed, inherited, and mutated? > > > Well, DNA is only one property of a living organism. DNA is argued by some > to not even really be our source code (RNA World Hypothesis [1]), Messenger > RNA serves as the object template for protein synthesis. Heh, I'll read the wiki article. I should be clear: by DNA, I mean a metaphor, so I guess what I mean is more like "what's the atomic quality or value of a program which can be composed in a way that enables natural selection of object or algorithm by genetic means?" To give you an example of the specific questions I'm talking about, here's a fun little bit about evolving programs to compete in a programming game called CoreWar: http://corewar.co.uk/perry.htm The author seemed to find that the initial selection of "gene" unit for a piece of software had to be arbitrary in his case (but RedCode is analogous to assembler. Something like Smalltalk or Self might have a more clearly defined atomic "gene" quality if we think about it.) > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
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