My feedback is that you've made some comments, but not provided a concrete example of something to give proper feedback on.
Exactly what is your proposal? The categorial quantum mechanics programming is somewhat implemented in Quantomatic - https://sites.google.com/site/quantomatic/ - (which you are probably aware of, but you didn't mention it explicitly in your post.) I like Quantomatic. But in some sense it's still pretty similar to isolated programs; and it's hard to compare it to a general purpose programming language ... On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Pavel Bažant <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear list members, > > I am new to this list, so I will quickly introduce myself and then present > my bloat reduction ideas. I am currently a PhD > > student in the area of quantum computers at Czech Technical University. I > started programming when I was 10 years old and enjoyed it greatly. Today I > am programming semi-professionally to support myself financially and > absolutely hate it. The company I work for is full of very kind and > cooperative people, and I enjoy figuring out concepts and designing things, > but... I absolutely hate real-world computer systems. What follows is a > description of a system I would like to work with, if it existed, in its > pure form. A real system would violate these rules on the boundaries with > older systems, but not internally. > > A system contains some data in its memory. Part of this data may be > programs applicable to other data. I want to be able to efficiently view > and manipulate the data. 90 % of data has structure that falls into one or > more general categories: > > general multigraph, > digraph, > regular graph, > bipartite graph, > complete graph, > directed acyclic graph, > planar graph, > linear graph, > cycle graph, > tree graph, > forest graph, > connected graph, > general nD array, > square matrix, > unordered set, > ordered set, > + a few others. > > > A node of the graph can of course itself represent another graph. I want > to see these structures and manipulate them in ways that directly > correspond to the categories into which they belong. For example, I want to > be able to manipulate, navigate, search, etc. all trees in a unified > fashion using the same point and click commands. Deleting a subdirectory > will be done the same way as deleting a paragraph in a document. The UI > will not be restricted to editing graphs and tables (you can still use a > painting application), but I want to be able to manipulate a pixmap as a > general table, because it falls into that category. I want to "eradicate" > working with data in an unnatural/inappropriate representations. The most > prominent example of such stupid representation is flat text. I want to > make flat text unnecessary at all levels. Programs=ASTs, not their > linearized encodings. Path is a list of tree node names. No parsing of > anything ever. No character escaping ever. No absurd tabs vs. spaces wars. > Little need for regexpes. The eradication of flat text wherever possible is > central to my approach. > My goal is to find and bootstrap a ridiculously simple structure > manipulation-based core system that can be grown *from within* to a fully > featured system -- after bootstrapping, all programming will be done by > direct tree and graph manipulations. > Note: An important influence in this respect is Lyx - the document editor. > Lyx is a structure editor, even though the authors do not have this > viewpoint. In Lyx, one directly manipulates the structure. It uses Latex to > render its output, but this is not essential. You can create and edit > macros that essentially extend the editor with new allowed elements in the > structure. The Lyx macro definitions are edited in a structured way, too. > No encoding of structure in text at all. No syntax checking -- it is not > possible to create a syntax error. > Another influence is mathematical and engineering notation. Mathemeticians > invented a rich notation to visually represent math concepts and > structures. For example, Penrose notation and the notation of categorical > quantum mechanics. Architects have rich notation for buildings. Electrical > engineers have rich notation for circuits. Musicians have their special > notation. It is just the programmers (well, perhaps not all of them) who > seem to think that representing complex programs as equally spaced rows of > fixed width characters from some limited charset is comfortable and > efficient. > > Any feedback appreciated. > > Pavel Bazant > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > -- Noon Silk Fancy a quantum lunch? https://sites.google.com/site/quantumlunch/ "Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being this signature."
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