Related Dan Friedman et al current work on relational interpreters: Worth watching in it's entirety but it gets really good after about 15:30 - http://blip.tv/clojure/dan-friedman-and-william-byrd-minikanren-5936333
David On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 12:55 PM, Alan Kay <alan.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: > (Hi Toby) > > And don't forget that John McCarthy was one of the very first to try to > automatically compute inverses of functions (this grew out of his PhD work > at Princeton in the mid-50s ...) > > Cheers, > > Alan > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Toby Schachman <t...@alum.mit.edu> > *To:* Fundamentals of New Computing <fonc@vpri.org> > *Sent:* Tuesday, April 24, 2012 9:48 AM > *Subject:* Re: [fonc] LightTable UI > > Benjamin Pierce et al did some work on bidirectional computation. The > premise is to work with bidirectional transformations (which they call > "lenses") rather than (unidirectional) functions. They took a stab at > identifying some primitives, and showing how they would work in some > applications. Of course we can do all the composition tricks with > lenses that we can do with functions :) > http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~harmony/ > > > See also Gerald Sussman's essay Building Robust Systems, > http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/readings/robust-systems.pdf > > In particular, he has a section called "Constraints Generalize > Procedures". He gives an example of a system as a constraint solver > (two-way information flow) contrasted with the system as a procedure > (one-way flow). > > > Also I submitted a paper for Onward 2012 which discusses this topic > among other things, > http://totem.cc/onward2012/onward.pdf > > My own interest is in programming interfaces for artists. I am > interested in these "causally agnostic" programming ideas because I > think they could support a more non-linear, improvisational approach > to programming. > > > Toby > > > 2012/4/24 Jarek Rzeszótko <jrzeszo...@gmail.com>: > > On the other hand, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to > > repeat it. > > > > Also, please excuse me (especially Julian Leviston) for maybe sounding > too > > pessimistic and too offensive, the idea surely is exciting, my point is > just > > that it excited me and probably many other persons before Bret Victor or > > Chris Granger did (very interesting) demos of it and what would _really_ > > excite me now is any glimpse of any idea whatsoever on how to make such > > things work in a general enough domain. Maybe they have or will have such > > idea, that would be cool, but until that time I think it's not > unreasonable > > to restrain a bit, especially those ideas are relatively easy to realize > in > > special domains and very hard to generalize to the wide scope of software > > people create. > > > > I would actually also love to hear from someone more knowledgeable about > > interesting historic attempts at doing such things, e.g. reversible > > computations, because there certainly were some: for one I remember a few > > years ago "back in time debugging" was quite a fashionable topic of talks > > (just google the phrase for a sampling), from a more hardware/physical > > standpoint there is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computingetc. > > > > Cheers, > > Jarosław Rzeszótko > > > > > > 2012/4/24 David Nolen <dnolen.li...@gmail.com> > >> > >> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" > >> > >> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 3:50 AM, Jarek Rzeszótko <jrzeszo...@gmail.com> > >> wrote: > >>> > >>> You make it sound a bit like this was a working solution already, while > >>> it seems to be a prototype at best, they are collecting funding right > now: > >>> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/306316578/light-table. > >>> > >>> I would love to be proven wrong, but I think given the state of the > >>> project, many people overexcite over it: some of the things proposed > aren't > >>> new, just wrapped into a nice modern design (you could try to create a > new > >>> "skin" or UI toolkit for some Smalltalk IDE for a similiar effect), > while > >>> for the ones that would be new like the real-time evaluation or > >>> visualisation there is too little detail to say whether they are onto > >>> something or not - I am sure many people thought of such things in the > past, > >>> but it is highly questionable to what extent those are actually doable, > >>> especially in an existing language like Clojure or JavaScript. I am not > >>> convinced if dropping 200,000$ at the thing will help with coming up > with a > >>> solution if there is no decent set of ideas to begin with. I would > >>> personally be much more enthusiastic if the people behind the project > at > >>> least outlined possible approaches they might take, before trying to > collect > >>> money. Currently it sounds like they just plan to "hack" it until it > handles > >>> a reasonable number of special cases, but tools that work only some of > the > >>> time are favoured by few. I think we need good theoretical approaches > to > >>> problems like this before we can make any progress in how the actual > real > >>> tools work like. > >>> > >>> Cheers, > >>> Jarosław Rzeszótko > >>> > >>> > >>> 2012/4/24 Julian Leviston <jul...@leviston.net> > >>>> > >>>> Thought this is worth a look as a next step after Brett Victor's work > >>>> (http://vimeo.com/36579366) on UI for programmers... > >>>> > >>>> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table > >>>> > >>>> We're still not quite "there" yet IMHO, but that's getting towards the > >>>> general direction... tie that in with a tile-script like language, > and I > >>>> think we might have something really useful. > >>>> > >>>> Julian > >>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>> fonc mailing list > >>>> fonc@vpri.org > >>>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> fonc mailing list > >>> fonc@vpri.org > >>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >>> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> fonc mailing list > >> fonc@vpri.org > >> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >> > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > fonc mailing list > > fonc@vpri.org > > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >
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