Yes.  Secure code distribution is not feasible with Smalltalk live images
as-designed.  Ergo, you cannot have a true distributed object-oriented
browser.

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Kevin Driedger <[email protected]>wrote:

> What is "Dan Ingalls' Smalltalk "live image" problem"?  I'd very much like
> to hear about it.
>
> Is it in reference to images have their own set of problems wrt to dragging
> around more than just source code and being tightly coupled to the
> development environment that created them?
>
> ]{evin
>
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:33 PM, John Zabroski <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Did you happen to read the posts I wrote on using Xavier LeRoy's certified
>> compiler building methodology to create a "object-oriented browser" that
>> doesn't succumb to Dan Ingalls' Smalltalk "live image" problem?
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 5:36 PM, Alexis Read <[email protected]>wrote:
>>
>>> I've been looking at integrating formal methods, advanced typing and
>>> provability into STEPS, mainly as a good solution to being able to go
>>> from specifications to testable prototypes easily. I've been looking
>>> at a number of different languages and proof assistants that could
>>> fill the role.
>>> >From the (little) reading I've done, there seems to be a concensus
>>> that higher order languages/provers are more useful than first order
>>> ones, in particular, pattern matching for types/solutions appears to
>>> be more complete under higher order logic.
>>> For example, Epigram (http://www.e-pig.org/darcs/Pig09/web/) is based
>>> on dependent types, but uses first order matching and is incomplete
>>> (see the literal programming manual, Epitome, p163) ie. it doesn't
>>> neccessarily match all types/terms. I'm of the opinion that, although
>>> having a sound and complete parser/matcher is pretty useless
>>> day-to-day (most computer languages and systems are unambiguous), it
>>> is important to be sure you'll catch all types/terms for proofs and
>>> for execution.
>>>
>>> Coq, Isabelle and PVS all now use rewriting to some extent, though in
>>> a higher order fashion (ie. more general than lambda calculus eg.
>>> Curry-Howard calculi, dependent types). They do appear to use
>>> first-order logic for some proofs where decidability is a problem
>>> (www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~jouannaud/articles/tyl.pdf<http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/%7Ejouannaud/articles/tyl.pdf>)
>>> and having seen
>>> some higher-order developments within Maude, I'd venture that it is
>>> useful to build higher-order provers on first-order environments -
>>> case in point, Epigram compiles down to Haskell constructs.
>>>
>>> There's a very good paper on pure type systems in Maude, with a view
>>> to implementing a higher-order (Open) Calculus of Constructions. The
>>> paper mentions a nice CINNI notation which allows you to use named
>>> types, rather than say de Brujin indices, and still avoid accidental
>>> type/term hiding. The proof assistant for OCC has been designed for
>>> use in a universe heirarchy
>>> (
>>> http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/TGI/mitarbeiter/wimis/stehr/occ_eng.html
>>> )
>>> which does sound similar to Alessandro Warth's Worlds POV.
>>>
>>> A later paper on the system is here:
>>> http://www.arnetminer.org/viewpub.do?pid=882439 It looks interesting,
>>> but I don't have a direct link for download unfortunately.
>>> Lastly, I've a couple of links to a declarative debugger in Maude -
>>> yes you can debug the specifications!
>>> (http://maude.sip.ucm.es/debugging/ and
>>> http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/papers/pdf/Riesco-et-al-debugging-tr.pdf)
>>>
>>> Fairly recently, the Maude team (and contributors) wrote a formal
>>> analyser for java programs (JavaFAN - see the slides in the Maude
>>> intro http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/talks/maude-padl10-slides.pdf). The
>>> basic strategy I've come up with, involves writing a version of Maude
>>> on top of Squeak (smalltalk), then adapting JavaFAN to analyse
>>> smalltalk bytecodes so you can prove the version of Maude itself, the
>>> VM, and thus the entire software stack from the top, down to the metal
>>> by virtue of running on the VM (ok, SqueakNOS isn't strictly bare
>>> metal, but STEPS/FRANK/NotSqueak should be, and I'd try to move the
>>> Maude runtime across).
>>>
>>> The Maude port would be straight - I don't know smalltalk that well,
>>> and I'm starting work by moving over the BuDDY library into Squeak.
>>> I'd appreciate people's thoughts on my programming direction.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Alexis.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> [email protected]
>>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>>>
>>
>>
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