Hi David
This is an interesting slant on a 50+ year old paramount problem (and one that
is even more important today).
Licklider called it the "communicating with aliens problem". He said 50 years
ago this month that "if we succeed in constructing the 'intergalactic network'
then our main problem will be learning how to 'communicate with aliens'. He
meant not just humans to humans but software to software and humans to
software.
(We gave him his intergalactic network but did not solve the communicating with
aliens problem.)
I think a key to finding better solutions is to -- as he did -- really push the
scale beyond our imaginations -- "intergalactic" -- and then ask "how can we
*still* establish workable communications of overlapping meanings?".
Another way to look at this is to ask: "What kinds of prep *can* you do
*beforehand* to facilitate communications with alien modules?"
Cheers,
Alan
>________________________________
> From: David Barbour <[email protected]>
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing <[email protected]>
>Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 6:13 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] 90% glue code
>
>
>
>Sounds like you want stone soup programming. :D
>
>
>In retrospect, I've been disappointed with most techniques that involve
>providing "information about module capabilities" to some external
>"configurator" (e.g. linkers as constraint solvers). Developers are asked to
>grok at least two very different programming models. Hand annotations or hints
>become common practice because many properties cannot be inferred. The
>resulting system isn't elegantly metacircular, i.e. you need that
>'configurator' in the loop and the metada with the inputs.
>
>
>An alternative I've been thinking about recently is to shift the link logic to
>the modules themselves. Instead of being passive bearers of information that
>some external linker glues together, the modules become active agents in a
>link environment that collaboratively construct the runtime behavior (which
>may afterwards be extracted). Developers would have some freedom to abstract
>and separate problem-specific link logic (including decision-making) rather
>than having a one-size-fits-all solution.
>
>
>Re: In my mind "powerful languages" thus means 98% requirements
>
>
>To me, "power" means something much more graduated: that I can get as much
>power as I need, that I can do so late in development without rewriting
>everything, that my language will grow with me and my projects.
>
>
>
>
>On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:04 PM, John Nilsson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>Maybe not. If there is enough information about different modules'
>capabilities, suitability for solving various problems and requirements, such
>that the required "glue" can be generated or configured automatically at run
>time. Then what is left is the input to such a generator or configurator. At
>some level of abstraction the input should transition from being glue and
>better be described as design.
>>Design could be seen as kind of a gray area if thought of mainly as picking
>>what to glue together as it still involves a significant amount of gluing ;)
>>But even design should be possible to formalize enough to minimize the amount
>>of actual design decisions required to encode in the source and what
>>decisions to leave to algorithms though. So what's left is to encode the
>>requirements as input to the designer.
>>In my mind "powerful languages" thus means 98% requirements, 2% design and 0%
>>glue.
>>BR
>>John
>>Den 17 apr 2013 05:04 skrev "Miles Fidelman" <[email protected]>:
>>
>>
>>So let's ask the obvious question, if we have powerful languages, and/or
>>powerful libraries, is not an application comprised primarily of glue code
>>that ties all the "piece parts" together in an application-specific way?
>>>
>>>David Barbour wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Steve Wart <[email protected]
>>>><mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Gath-Gealaich
>>>> > In real systems, 90% of code (conservatively) is glue code.
>>>>
>>>> What is the origin of this claim?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I claimed it from observation and experience. But I'm sure there are other
>>>>people who have claimed it, too. Do you doubt its veracity?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 12:15 PM, David Barbour
>>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 11:57 AM, David Barbour
>>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Loup Vaillant-David
>>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 04:17:48PM -0700, David
>>>> Barbour wrote:
>>>> > On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Gath-Gealaich
>>>> > In real systems, 90% of code (conservatively) is
>>>> glue code.
>>>>
>>>> Does this *have* to be the case? Real systems also
>>>> use C++ (or
>>>> Java). Better languages may require less glue, (even
>>>> if they require
>>>> just as much core logic).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes.
>>>>
>>>> The prevalence of glue code is a natural consequence of
>>>> combinatorial effects. E.g. there are many ways to
>>>> partition and summarize properties into data-structures.
>>>> Unless we uniformly make the same decisions - and we won't
>>>> (due to context-dependent variations in convenience or
>>>> performance) - then we will eventually have many
>>>> heterogeneous data models. Similarly can be said of event
>>>> models.
>>>>
>>>> We can't avoid this problem. At best, we can delay it a
>>>> little.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I should clarify: a potential answer to the glue-code issue is
>>>> to *infer* much more of it, i.e. auto-wiring, constraint
>>>> models, searches. We could automatically build pipelines that
>>>> convert one type to another, given smaller steps (though this
>>>> does risk aggregate lossiness due to intermediate summaries or
>>>> subtle incompatibilities). Machine-learning could be
>>>> leveraged to find correspondences between structures, perhaps
>>>> aiding humans. 90% or more of code will be glue-code, but it
>>>> doesn't all need to be hand-written. I am certainly pursuing
>>>> such techniques in my current language development.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>--
>>>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>>>In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
>>>
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