Re: [fonc] [IAEP] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)
The WAM and other fast schemes for Prolog are worth looking at. But the Javascript version that Alex did using his and Stephen Murrell's design for compact Prolog semantics (about 90 lines of Javascript code) is very illuminating for those interested in the logic of logic. But Prolog has always had some serious flaws -- so it is worth looking at cleaned up and enhanced versions (such as the Datalog with negation and time variants I've mentioned). Also, Shapiro's Concurrent Prolog did quite a cleanup long ago. I particularly liked the arguments of Bill Kornfield's Prolog With Equality paper from many years ago -- this is one of several seminal perspectives on where this kind of language should be taken. The big flaw with most of the attempts I've see to combine Logic and Objects is that what should be done about state is not taken seriously. The first sins were committed in Prolog itself by allowing a non-automatic undoable assert. I've argued that it would be much better to use takeoffs of situation calculus and pseudotime to allow perfect deductions/implications/functional-relationships to be computed while still moving from one context to another to have a model of before, now, and after. These are not new ideas, and I didn't have them first. Cheers, Alan From: Ryan Mitchley ryan.mitch...@gmail.com To: Fundamentals of New Computing fonc@vpri.org Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 5:26 AM Subject: Re: [fonc] [IAEP] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell) On 15/03/2012 14:20, Alan Kay wrote: Alex Warth did both a standard Prolog and an English based language one using OMeta in both Javascript, and in Smalltalk. I must have a look at these. Thanks for all of the references. I was working my way through Warren Abstract Machine implementation details but it was truly headache-inducing (for me, anyway). A book I keep meaning to get is Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, which describes a Prolog-like implementation (and much more) in Lisp. The Minsky book would be very welcome! ___ 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] Apple and hardware (was: Error trying to compile COLA)
On Mar 16, 2012, at 0:03 , Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: Marcel Weiher wrote on Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:33:07 +0100 I have a little Postscript interpreter/scratchpad in the AppStore (TouchScript, http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/touchscript/id398914579?mt=8 ). Admittedly, it was mostly a trial balloon to see if something like that would be accepted, and it was (2nd revision so far). And somewhat surprisingly a (very) few people even seem to be using it! Sharing is via iTunes. Thanks for the tip! I see your description is Use the Postscript(tm) language to express your ideas and see the results on your iPhone. Transfer your creations to your computer via iTunes sharing as either PNG or Postscript documents. It is likely that the reviewers considered that Postscript documents means a text file (like a .pdf or .doc). Or a .m or a .c or or a .pl or a .rb or a .js … I am not sure how it is on other platforms, but on OS X program files are also documents. I see your point, but I think it is a little thin to base your argument on a single word that is at the very least ambiguous (partly on purpose) when the rest of the description is very clear that this is about a programming language and that you are programming. In addition the reviewers also actually run the program, and at that point it becomes 100% clear what this does. The user who gave you a bad review certainly did (another user corrected him/her). And the user(s) who corrected the first user chided him for not reading the fracking description or looking at the fracking screenshots (RTFD, LATFSS?). App Store purchasers are known for not looking at what they are buying and then complaining bitterly. Fact of life... So this doesn't tell us what Apple would do with a language that allows you to share programs. I think it tells us that Apple does not, at this point, have a consistent or consistently applied policy. Which may have something to do with the fact that such a policy is impossible. So we chip away at the edges and live with the inconsistencies... Marcel ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] [IAEP] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)
On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Ryan Mitchley ryan.mitch...@gmail.comwrote: ** On 15/03/2012 14:20, Alan Kay wrote: Alex Warth did both a standard Prolog and an English based language one using OMeta in both Javascript, and in Smalltalk. I must have a look at these. Thanks for all of the references. I was working my way through Warren Abstract Machine implementation details but it was truly headache-inducing (for me, anyway). A book I keep meaning to get is Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, which describes a Prolog-like implementation (and much more) in Lisp. The Minsky book would be very welcome! Another Lisp approach is Dan Friedman, Oleg Kiselyov, and William Byrd's miniKanren system. It's purely functional and is incredibly only about 200 lines of Scheme. Even more surprising is that the minimal design is *stunningly* efficient. The beauty of such a tiny system is that it's simple to improve. They recently added constraint logic programming over any domain with about 600-700 more lines of code. David ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
