Re: [fonc] When natural language fails!
It doesn't reply forty-two? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081019212355AAHkApl On Apr 9, 2013, at 5:48 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: It's tragic that Siri can't tell me what you get when you multiply six by nine. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] When natural language fails!
Base 13 folks. On Apr 12, 2013 3:41 AM, GrrrWaaa grrrw...@gmail.com wrote: It doesn't reply forty-two? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081019212355AAHkApl On Apr 9, 2013, at 5:48 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: It's tragic that Siri can't tell me what you get when you multiply six by nine. ___ 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] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1347 ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Layering, Thinking and Computing
I had this long response drafted criticizing Bloom/CALM and Lightweight Time Warps, when I realized that we are probably again not aligned as to which meta level we're discussing. (my main criticism of Bloom/CALM was assumption of timesteps, which is an indicator of a meta-framework relying on something else to implement it within reality; and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation, which also needs an implementor that touches reality; synchronous reactive programming has the word synchronous in it) - hence my assertion that this is more meta level than actors. I think you and I personally care about different things. I want a computational model that is as close to how the Universe works as possible, with a minimalistic set of constructs from which everything else can be built. Hence my references to cellular automata and Wolfram's hobby of searching for the Universe. Anything which starts as synchronous cannot be minimalistic because that's not what we observe in the world, our world is asynchronous, and if we disagree on this axiom, then so much for that :D But actors model fails with regards to extensibility(*) and reasoning Those are concerns of an imperator, are they not? Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm trying to highlight that our goals differ. But, without invasive code changes or some other form of cheating (e.g. global reflection) it can be difficult to obtain the name of an actor that is part of an actor configuration. Again, this is ignorance of the power of Object Capability and the Actor Model itself. The above is forbidden in the actor model unless the configuration explicitly sends you an address in the message. My earlier comment about Akka refers to this same mistake. However, you do bring up interesting meta-level reasoning complaints against the actor model. I'm not trying to dismiss them away or anything. As I mentioned before, that list is a good guide as to what meta-level programmers care about when writing programs. It would be great if actors could make it easier... and I'm probably starting to get lost here between the meta-levels again :/ Which brings me to a question. Am I the only one that loses track of which meta-level I'm reasoning or is this a common occurrence Bringing it back to the topic somewhat, how do people handle reasoning about all the different layers (meta-levels) when thinking about computing? On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 12:21 PM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Tristan Slominski tristan.slomin...@gmail.com wrote: I think it's more of a pessimism about other models. [..] My non-pessimism about actors is linked to Wolfram's cellular automata turing machine [..] overwhelming consideration across all those hints is unbounded scalability. I'm confused. Why would you be pessimistic about non-actor models when your argument is essentially that very simple, deterministic, non-actor models can be both Turing complete and address unbounded scalability? Hmm. Perhaps what you're really arguing is pessimistic about procedural - which today is the mainstream paradigm of choice. The imperial nature of procedures makes it difficult to compose or integrate them in any extensional or collaborative manner - imperative works best when there is exactly one imperator (emperor). I can agree with that pessimism. In practice, the limits of scalability are very often limits of reasoning (too hard to reason about the interactions, safety, security, consistency, progress, process control, partial failure) or limits of extensibility (to inject or integrate new behaviors with existing systems requires invasive changes that are inconvenient or unauthorized). If either of those limits exist, scaling will stall. E.g. pure functional programming fails to scale for extensibility reasons, even though it admits a lot of natural parallelism. Of course, scalable performance is sometimes the issue, especially in models that have global 'instantaneous' relationships (e.g. ad-hoc non-modular logic programming) or global maintenance issues (like garbage collection). Unbounded scalability requires a consideration for locality of computation, and that it takes time for information to propagate. Actors model is one (of many) models that provides some of the considerations necessary for unbounded performance scalability. But actors model fails with regards to extensibility(*) and reasoning. So do most of the other models you mention - e.g. cellular automatons are even less extensible than actors (cells only talk to a fixed set of immediate neighbors), though one can address that with a notion of visitors (mobile agents). From what you say, I get the impression that you aren't very aware of other models that might compete with actors, that attempt to address not only unbounded performance scalability but some of the other limiting
Re: [fonc] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
Neat! I love how the IDE looks like a spellbook. There is also an associated paper, On the Nature of Fires and How to Spark Them When You’re Not There [1]. [1] http://db.grinnell.edu/sigcse/sigcse2013/Program/viewAcceptedProposal.pdf?sessionType=papersessionNumber=252 I've occasionally contemplated developing such a game: program the behavior of your team of goblins (who may have different strengths, capabilities, and some behavioral habits/quirks) to get through a series of puzzles, with players building/managing a library as they go. My interest in PLs was sparked from MOOs (in particular, the question of how to decentralize them). Today, I'm more interested in approaches that can be generalized beyond gaming. But I might get back to game development one day. CodeHero is another game that combines coding with gameplay, but it seems to a much less integrated degree than CodeSpells [2][3]. [2] http://primerlabs.com/codehero0 [3] http://www.howtogeek.com/106431/codehero-teaches-programming-via-first-person-shooter-game/ Regards, Dave On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 9:30 AM, John Carlson yottz...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1347 ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Layering, Thinking and Computing
I feel like these discussions are tangential to the larger issues brought up on FONC and just serve to indulge personal interest discussions. Aren't any of us interested in revolution? It won't start with digging into existing stuff like this. On Apr 12, 2013, at 11:13 AM, Tristan Slominski wrote: oops, I forgot to edit this part: and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation, which also needs an implementor that touches reality It should have read: and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation and (I think) actors are minimal implementors of message-driven protocols On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 1:07 PM, Tristan Slominski tristan.slomin...@gmail.com wrote: I had this long response drafted criticizing Bloom/CALM and Lightweight Time Warps, when I realized that we are probably again not aligned as to which meta level we're discussing. (my main criticism of Bloom/CALM was assumption of timesteps, which is an indicator of a meta-framework relying on something else to implement it within reality; and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation, which also needs an implementor that touches reality; synchronous reactive programming has the word synchronous in it) - hence my assertion that this is more meta level than actors. I think you and I personally care about different things. I want a computational model that is as close to how the Universe works as possible, with a minimalistic set of constructs from which everything else can be built. Hence my references to cellular automata and Wolfram's hobby of searching for the Universe. Anything which starts as synchronous cannot be minimalistic because that's not what we observe in the world, our world is asynchronous, and if we disagree on this axiom, then so much for that :D But actors model fails with regards to extensibility(*) and reasoning Those are concerns of an imperator, are they not? Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm trying to highlight that our goals differ. But, without invasive code changes or some other form of cheating (e.g. global reflection) it can be difficult to obtain the name of an actor that is part of an actor configuration. Again, this is ignorance of the power of Object Capability and the Actor Model itself. The above is forbidden in the actor model unless the configuration explicitly sends you an address in the message. My earlier comment about Akka refers to this same mistake. However, you do bring up interesting meta-level reasoning complaints against the actor model. I'm not trying to dismiss them away or anything. As I mentioned before, that list is a good guide as to what meta-level programmers care about when writing programs. It would be great if actors could make it easier... and I'm probably starting to get lost here between the meta-levels again :/ Which brings me to a question. Am I the only one that loses track of which meta-level I'm reasoning or is this a common occurrence Bringing it back to the topic somewhat, how do people handle reasoning about all the different layers (meta-levels) when thinking about computing? On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 12:21 PM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Tristan Slominski tristan.slomin...@gmail.com wrote: I think it's more of a pessimism about other models. [..] My non-pessimism about actors is linked to Wolfram's cellular automata turing machine [..] overwhelming consideration across all those hints is unbounded scalability. I'm confused. Why would you be pessimistic about non-actor models when your argument is essentially that very simple, deterministic, non-actor models can be both Turing complete and address unbounded scalability? Hmm. Perhaps what you're really arguing is pessimistic about procedural - which today is the mainstream paradigm of choice. The imperial nature of procedures makes it difficult to compose or integrate them in any extensional or collaborative manner - imperative works best when there is exactly one imperator (emperor). I can agree with that pessimism. In practice, the limits of scalability are very often limits of reasoning (too hard to reason about the interactions, safety, security, consistency, progress, process control, partial failure) or limits of extensibility (to inject or integrate new behaviors with existing systems requires invasive changes that are inconvenient or unauthorized). If either of those limits exist, scaling will stall. E.g. pure functional programming fails to scale for extensibility reasons, even though it admits a lot of natural parallelism. Of course, scalable performance is sometimes the issue, especially in models that have global
Re: [fonc] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
On 2013-04-12 11:11AM, David Barbour wrote: I've occasionally contemplated developing such a game: program the behavior of your team of goblins (who may have different strengths, capabilities, and some behavioral habits/quirks) to get through a series of puzzles, with players building/managing a library as they go. Forth Warrior? :) https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/tree/master/games/Warrior2 --Josh ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
Fine, but what does that have to do with setting the fundamentals of new computing? Is this just a mailing list for computer scientist to jerk off? On Apr 12, 2013, at 1:00 PM, Josh Grams wrote: On 2013-04-12 11:11AM, David Barbour wrote: I've occasionally contemplated developing such a game: program the behavior of your team of goblins (who may have different strengths, capabilities, and some behavioral habits/quirks) to get through a series of puzzles, with players building/managing a library as they go. Forth Warrior? :) https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/tree/master/games/Warrior2 --Josh ___ 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] FONC: The Fanboy Mailing List With No Productivity
This is just like open source software. A bunch of feelgood people hangin' out and messin' around, not ever doing anything, but pretending they are getting somewhere by indulging themselves. No one on here is probably working on the Fundamentals of New Computing. This is just a trash bin for people who don't want to do anything. The real work is probably on noise-free mailing list. This is the fanboy list for Alan Kay. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
One of the fundamentals we are all still grasping at is how to teach programming. These are links to people attempting to contribute something meaningful in that direction rather than posting derisive comments and blatant cult related wing nuttery which, in fact, have nothing to do with computing. Good day sir! On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:12 PM, John Pratt jpra...@gmail.com wrote: Fine, but what does that have to do with setting the fundamentals of new computing? Is this just a mailing list for computer scientist to jerk off? On Apr 12, 2013, at 1:00 PM, Josh Grams wrote: On 2013-04-12 11:11AM, David Barbour wrote: I've occasionally contemplated developing such a game: program the behavior of your team of goblins (who may have different strengths, capabilities, and some behavioral habits/quirks) to get through a series of puzzles, with players building/managing a library as they go. Forth Warrior? :) https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/tree/master/games/Warrior2 --Josh ___ 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
Re: [fonc] Layering, Thinking and Computing
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Tristan Slominski tristan.slomin...@gmail.com wrote: my main criticism of Bloom/CALM was assumption of timesteps, which is an indicator of a meta-framework relying on something else to implement it within reality At the moment, we don't know whether or not reality has discrete timesteps [1]. I would not dismiss a model as being distinguishable from 'reality' on that basis. A meta-framework is necessary because we're implementing Bloom/CALM not directly in reality, but rather upon a silicone chip that enforces sequential computation even where it is not most appropriate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronon ; and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation and (I think) actors are minimal implementors of message-driven protocols [from edit] This criticism isn't relevant for the same reason that your but you can implement lambda calculus in actors arguments weren't relevant. The properties of the abstraction must be considered separately from the properties of the model implementing it. It is true that you can implement a time warp system with actors. It is also the case that you can implement actors in a time warp system. Either direction will involve a framework or global transform. I think you and I personally care about different things. I want a computational model that is as close to how the Universe works as possible, You want more than close to how the Universe works. For example, you also want symbiotic autopoietic and allopoietic systems and antifragility, and possibly even object capability security. Do you deny this? But you should consider whether your wants might be in conflict with one another. And, if so, you should weigh and consider what you want more. I believe they are in conflict with one another. Reality has a lot of properties that make it a difficult programming model. There are reasons we write software instead of hardware. There is a related discussion [fonc] Physics and Types in 2011 August. There, I say: Physics has a very large influence on a lot of language designs and programming models, especially those oriented around concurrency and communication. We cannot fight physics, because physics will ruthlessly violate our abstractions and render our programming models unscalable, or non-performant, or inconsistent (pick two). But we want programming to be easier than physics. We need composition (like Lego bricks), integration (without 'impedance mismatch'), open extension, and abstraction (IMO, in roughly that order). So the trick is to isolate behaviors that we can utilize and feasibly implement at arbitrary scales (small and large), yet that support our other desiderata. As I said earlier, the limits on growth, and thus on scalability, are often limits of reasoning or extensibility. But it is not impossible to develop programming models that align well with physical constraints but that do not sacrifice reasoning and extensibility. Based on our discussions so far, you seem to believe that if you develop a model very near our universe, the rest will follow - that actor systems will shine. But I am not aware of any sound argument that will take you from this model works just like our universe to this model is usable by collaborating humans. a minimalistic set of constructs from which everything else can be built A minima is just a model from which you can't take anything away. There are lots of Turing complete minima. Also, there is no guarantee that our universe is minimalistic. Anything which starts as synchronous cannot be minimalistic because that's not what we observe in the world, our world is asynchronous, and if we disagree on this axiom, then so much for that :D I believe our world is 'synchronous' in the sense of things happening at the same time in different places. I believe our world is 'synchronous' in the sense that two photons pointed in the same direction will (barring interference) move the same distance over the same period. If you send those photons at the same time, they will arrive at the same time. It seems, at the physical layer, that 'asynchronous' only happens when you have some sort of intermediate storage or non-homogeneous delay. And even in those cases, if I were to model the storage, transport, and retrieval processes down to the physical minutiae, every micro process would be end-to-end synchronous - or close enough to reason about and model them that way. (I'm not sure about the quantum layers.) Asynchronous communication can be a useful *abstraction* because it allows us to hide some of the physical minutiae and heterogeneous computations. But asynchrony isn't the only choice in that role. E.g. if we model static latencies, those can also hide flexible processing, while perhaps being easier to reason about for real-time systems. But, without invasive code changes or some other form of cheating (e.g.
Re: [fonc] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
Colobot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colobot -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Layering, Thinking and Computing
Existing stuff from outside of mainstream is exactly what you should be digging into. On Apr 12, 2013 12:08 PM, John Pratt jpra...@gmail.com wrote: I feel like these discussions are tangential to the larger issues brought up on FONC and just serve to indulge personal interest discussions. Aren't any of us interested in revolution? It won't start with digging into existing stuff like this. On Apr 12, 2013, at 11:13 AM, Tristan Slominski wrote: oops, I forgot to edit this part: and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation, which also needs an implementor that touches reality It should have read: and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation and (I think) actors are minimal implementors of message-driven protocols On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 1:07 PM, Tristan Slominski tristan.slomin...@gmail.com wrote: I had this long response drafted criticizing Bloom/CALM and Lightweight Time Warps, when I realized that we are probably again not aligned as to which meta level we're discussing. (my main criticism of Bloom/CALM was assumption of timesteps, which is an indicator of a meta-framework relying on something else to implement it within reality; and my criticism of Lightweight Time Warps had to do with that it is a protocol for message-driven simulation, which also needs an implementor that touches reality; synchronous reactive programming has the word synchronous in it) - hence my assertion that this is more meta level than actors. I think you and I personally care about different things. I want a computational model that is as close to how the Universe works as possible, with a minimalistic set of constructs from which everything else can be built. Hence my references to cellular automata and Wolfram's hobby of searching for the Universe. Anything which starts as synchronous cannot be minimalistic because that's not what we observe in the world, our world is asynchronous, and if we disagree on this axiom, then so much for that :D But actors model fails with regards to extensibility(*) and reasoning Those are concerns of an imperator, are they not? Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm trying to highlight that our goals differ. But, without invasive code changes or some other form of cheating (e.g. global reflection) it can be difficult to obtain the name of an actor that is part of an actor configuration. Again, this is ignorance of the power of Object Capability and the Actor Model itself. The above is forbidden in the actor model unless the configuration explicitly sends you an address in the message. My earlier comment about Akka refers to this same mistake. However, you do bring up interesting meta-level reasoning complaints against the actor model. I'm not trying to dismiss them away or anything. As I mentioned before, that list is a good guide as to what meta-level programmers care about when writing programs. It would be great if actors could make it easier... and I'm probably starting to get lost here between the meta-levels again :/ Which brings me to a question. Am I the only one that loses track of which meta-level I'm reasoning or is this a common occurrence Bringing it back to the topic somewhat, how do people handle reasoning about all the different layers (meta-levels) when thinking about computing? On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 12:21 PM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Tristan Slominski tristan.slomin...@gmail.com wrote: I think it's more of a pessimism about other models. [..] My non-pessimism about actors is linked to Wolfram's cellular automata turing machine [..] overwhelming consideration across all those hints is unbounded scalability. I'm confused. Why would you be pessimistic about non-actor models when your argument is essentially that very simple, deterministic, non-actor models can be both Turing complete and address unbounded scalability? Hmm. Perhaps what you're really arguing is pessimistic about procedural - which today is the mainstream paradigm of choice. The imperial nature of procedures makes it difficult to compose or integrate them in any extensional or collaborative manner - imperative works best when there is exactly one imperator (emperor). I can agree with that pessimism. In practice, the limits of scalability are very often limits of reasoning (too hard to reason about the interactions, safety, security, consistency, progress, process control, partial failure) or limits of extensibility (to inject or integrate new behaviors with existing systems requires invasive changes that are inconvenient or unauthorized). If either of those limits exist, scaling will stall. E.g. pure functional programming fails to scale for extensibility reasons, even though it admits a lot of natural parallelism. Of course,
Re: [fonc] FONC: The Fanboy Mailing List With No Productivity
John Pratt wrote: This is the fanboy list for Alan Kay. Well, in a certain sense it is. I'm here because I'm interested in what VPRI are doing, and in what like minded people are interested in. It suits me just fine apart from the occasional tantrums some people have. Steve ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] FONC: The Fanboy Mailing List With No Productivity
On 12 April 2013 22:18, John Pratt jpra...@gmail.com wrote: This is just like open source software. A bunch of feelgood people hangin' out and messin' around, not ever doing anything, but pretending they are getting somewhere by indulging themselves. No one on here is probably working on the Fundamentals of New Computing. I know that i going against the rule to not feed the troll, but sorry cannot resist. Replied using Firefox open-source software. This is just a trash bin for people who don't want to do anything. The real work is probably on noise-free mailing list. This is the fanboy list for Alan Kay. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
[fonc] Call for GSoC students on Scala ACP related projects
The Scala team at EPFL Lausanne is this year again a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code, a global program that offers students stipends to write code for open source projects. Following a presentation I gave there a month ago, the Scala team has included two projects for GSoC related to my language extension named SubScript. More information is here at the Scala site and below. This month students can apply. Interested and qualified? You may contact EPFL, or me as andre dot vandelft at gmail dot com. SubScript SubScript is a way to extend common programming languages aimed to ease event handling and concurrency. Typical application areas are GUI controllers, text processing applications and discrete event simulations. SubScript is based on a mathematical concurrency theory named Algebra of Communicating Processes (ACP). You can regard ACP as an extension to Boolean algebra with ‘things that can happen’. These items are glued together with operations such alternative, sequential and parallel compositions. This way ACP combines the essence of grammar specification languages and notions of parallelism. Adding ACP to a common programming language yields a lightweight alternative for threading concurrency. It also brings the 50 year old but still magic expressiveness of languages for parser generators and compiler compilers, so that SubScript suits language processing. The nondeterministic style combined with concurrency support happens to be very useful for programming GUI controllers. Surprisingly, ACP with a few extras even enables data flow style programming, like you have with pipes in Unix shell language. Currently a SubScript extension to Scala is available, see http://subscript-lang.org. This comes with a branch of the Scala compiler, a run-time library, support for the Scala-Swing reactive framework and example programs. The C part of ACP is not yet supported. Investigate SubScript on top of JavaScript SubScript might as well extend other languages next to Scala. An interesting starter would be JavaScript. The good thing is that as from April 2013 (?) Scala translates into JavaScript. Therefore a single code base of the SubScript VM, which is written in Scala, may also work for JavaScript. The project would involve some of the following tasks: develop use cases, both for client-side and server-side applications create a translator for SubScript into JavaScript extend an existing JavaScript interpreter to understand SubScript define a strategy to send over SubScript in HTML pagesand have it translated provide a translator for the SubScript VM source code into JavaScript JavaScript does not support explicit multithreading; develop an alternative Enhance Akka using SubScript Akka is the Scala actor implementation, very useful for distributed functions. Typically an actor operates a state machine, which is programmed using state variables. This is relatively inconvenient to program and read. SubScript may provide a better alternative for programming actor internals. This project would involve: develop typical actors in two versions: just Scala and SubScript compare these versions in terms of clearness and conciseness measure the performance of these versions make a tutorial More information on SubScriptActors is available at http://subscript-lang.org/subscript-actors/. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] CodeSpells. Learn how to program Java by writing spells for a 3D environment.
Btw, is this the same Griswold of Snobol and Icon (programming languages) fame? On Apr 12, 2013 3:20 PM, shaun gilchrist shaunxc...@gmail.com wrote: One of the fundamentals we are all still grasping at is how to teach programming. These are links to people attempting to contribute something meaningful in that direction rather than posting derisive comments and blatant cult related wing nuttery which, in fact, have nothing to do with computing. Good day sir! On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:12 PM, John Pratt jpra...@gmail.com wrote: Fine, but what does that have to do with setting the fundamentals of new computing? Is this just a mailing list for computer scientist to jerk off? On Apr 12, 2013, at 1:00 PM, Josh Grams wrote: On 2013-04-12 11:11AM, David Barbour wrote: I've occasionally contemplated developing such a game: program the behavior of your team of goblins (who may have different strengths, capabilities, and some behavioral habits/quirks) to get through a series of puzzles, with players building/managing a library as they go. Forth Warrior? :) https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/tree/master/games/Warrior2 --Josh ___ 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
Re: [fonc] When natural language fails!
Elephant has nothing to do with voice, nor even with natural language, but rather with a new approach to control (based on 'speech acts' - requests, commitments, promises) and state (based on recording and reviewing speech acts). But it's still a good read. On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:05 PM, Casey Ransberger casey.obrie...@gmail.com wrote: I had never heard of Elephant. Of course anything John McCarthy is worth a look, and this is relevant to my interests:) Also: thanks for pointing me at all the papers folks! On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Brendan Baldwin bren...@usergenic.comwrote: Wasn't John McCarthy's Elephant programming language based on the metaphor of conversation? Perhaps voice based programming interactions are addressed there? On Apr 9, 2013 8:46 AM, David Barbour dmbarb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 1:48 AM, Casey Ransberger casey.obrie...@gmail.com wrote: The computer is going to keep getting smaller. How do you program a phone? It would be nice to be able to just talk to it, but it needs to be able -- in a programming context -- to eliminate ambiguity by asking me questions about what I meant. Or *something.* Well, once computers get small enough that we can easily integrate them with our senses and gestures, it will become easier to program again. Phones are an especially difficult target (big hands and fingers, small screens, poor tactile feedback, noisy environments). But something like Project Glass or AR glasses could project information onto different surfaces - screens the size of walls, effectively - or perhaps the size of our moleskin notebooks [1]. Something like myo [2] would support pointer and gesture control without much interfering with our use of hands. That said, I think supporting ambiguity and resolving it will be one of the upcoming major revolutions in both HCI and software design. It has a rather deep impact on software design [3]. (Your Siri converstation had me laughing out loud. Appreciated.) [1] http://awelonblue.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/ubiquitous-programming-with-pen-and-paper/ [2] https://getmyo.com/ [3] http://awelonblue.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/abandoning-commitment-in-hci/ ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc -- Casey Ransberger ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
