Re: [fonc] languages

On 6/6/2011 6:05 PM, David Barbour wrote: On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Julian Leviston > wrote: Is a language I program in necessarily limiting in its expressibility? Yes. All communication architectures are necessarily limiting in their expressiveness (

Re: [fonc] languages

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Julian Leviston wrote: > Is a language I program in necessarily limiting in its expressibility? > Yes. All communication architectures are necessarily limiting in their expressiveness (in the sense defined by Matthias Felleisen). For example, can't easily introduc

Re: [fonc] Electrical Actors?

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: > > Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? > This would be difficult. We are constrained by fixed memory resources and connectivity relationships at the hardware level. The memory limits constrain scheduling in ways that may conf

Re: [fonc] Static typing and/vs. boot strap-able, small kernel, comprehensible, user modifiable systems

Ah thanks, I seem to have missed a large chunk of back-reading. I thought that Maude could do semantic typing, eg. in the parameterized views section of the maude manual ( http://maude.cs.uiuc.edu/maude2-manual/html/maude-manualch15.html). Could you expand on what you meant with the semantic typing

Re: [fonc] Electrical Actors?

On 6/6/2011 11:53 AM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: Casey, Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? I studied this in detail back in 1990 and had several references. These are physically hard for me to reach right now and probably are not easy to find on the web. Though not an actor m

Re: [fonc] languages

On 6/6/2011 10:29 AM, K. K. Subramaniam wrote: Alan, Thanks for the correction. IAL was one of the proposed names for the ALGOL, wasn't it? The reason why this name popped up from my grad days was because something as complicated as designing a new programming language was considered a fun thin

Re: [fonc] Electrical Actors?

Casey, > Has anyone taken the actor model down to the metal? I studied this in detail back in 1990 and had several references. These are physically hard for me to reach right now and probably are not easy to find on the web. Though not an actor model, you might find my "RNA" idea of objects and

Re: [fonc] why are true,false,nil pseudovariables

My point is that you could just Object have methods true,false and nil Any reasonably optimalizing compiler would replace them with bytecode. On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 08:05:13PM +0200, Toon Verwaest wrote: > They are parsed just like variables. Rather than finding their declaration > in the method i

Re: [fonc] languages

Inline On Jun 6, 2011, at 10:48 AM, Alan Kay wrote: > It was ... and is mostly associated with what came to be called Algol 58, but > not Algol 60. > > Another way to look at it is that "almost all systems are difficult to > maintain down the line" -- partly because they were not designed wit

Re: [fonc] why are true,false,nil pseudovariables

They are parsed just like variables. Rather than finding their declaration in the method itself they are known to the compiler. Hence pseudovariables. It also has the advantage that you don't have to pollute your literal frame since there are special bytecodes that handle them. Cheers, Toon On Ju

Re: [fonc] languages

It was ... and is mostly associated with what came to be called Algol 58, but not Algol 60. Another way to look at it is that "almost all systems are difficult to maintain down the line" -- partly because they were not designed with this in mind -- and this is true for most programming languag

Re: [fonc] languages

Alan, Thanks for the correction. IAL was one of the proposed names for the ALGOL, wasn't it? The reason why this name popped up from my grad days was because something as complicated as designing a new programming language was considered a fun thing to do. It wasn't as much fun for those who h

Re: [fonc] languages

Hi Subbu Check out when Jules Schwartz actual did Jovial. And the acronym was actually "Jules' Own Version of the International Algebraic Language" Cheers, Alan From: K. K. Subramaniam To: fonc@vpri.org Cc: Alan Kay Sent: Mon, June 6, 2011 8:34:08 AM Subje

[fonc] why are true,false,nil pseudovariables

Hello As I started looking at squeak I am puzzled why true,false and nil are pseudovariables. Why they cannot be just constants like 0,1. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc

Re: [fonc] languages

On Sunday 05 Jun 2011 12:16:33 AM Alan Kay wrote: > People of my generation (50 years ago) were used to learning and using > many syntaxes (e.g. one might learn as many as 20 or more machine > code/assembler languages, plus 10 or more HLLs, both kinds with more > variability in form and intent tha

[fonc] Re: Electrical Actors?

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Casey Ransberger wrote: > On Jun 5, 2011, at 4:25 PM, Dale Schumacher wrote: >> If someone has, I would sure like to hear about it!  There was the >> Apiary machine, but I don't think that was ever physically built, only >> simulated. > > Googling... > "Tradeoffs

Re: Terseness, precedence, deprogramming (was Re: [fonc] languages)

Yep ... As Abrams pointed out, "Beating" should be pronounced "Bee-Ating" because it was a "promotion scheme" that reminded him of the beatification process in the path towards sainthood ... Cheers, Alan From: David Leibs To: Fundamentals of New Computing

Re: [fonc] languages

On 6/6/2011 12:29 AM, Casey Ransberger wrote: I've heard of an IDE called VisualAge (I think?) that was written in Smalltalk but could parse and to a degree reason about other languages, but I've never seen it. Have you looked for that thing, or was it just not so great? not really looked a

Re: [fonc] Re: Electrical Actors?

On 6/6/2011 12:18 AM, Casey Ransberger wrote: Below:) On Jun 5, 2011, at 11:19 PM, "C. Scott Ananian" wrote: I explored this idea a bit once upon a time in the context of Java: http://cscott.net/Publications/design.pdf The bibliography cites most of the related work I know about. --scott

Re: [fonc] languages

I've heard of an IDE called VisualAge (I think?) that was written in Smalltalk but could parse and to a degree reason about other languages, but I've never seen it. Have you looked for that thing, or was it just not so great? On Jun 5, 2011, at 11:55 PM, BGB wrote: > On 6/5/2011 11:03 PM, C.

Re: [fonc] Re: Electrical Actors?

Below:) On Jun 5, 2011, at 11:19 PM, "C. Scott Ananian" wrote: > I explored this idea a bit once upon a time in the context of Java: > http://cscott.net/Publications/design.pdf > The bibliography cites most of the related work I know about. > --scott Reading it now -- thanks for sharing this.

Re: [fonc] languages

On 6/5/2011 11:03 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:35 PM, BGB > wrote: I would personally like to see an IDE which was: more-or-less language neutral, to what extent this was practical (more like traditional standalone editors); not t