That "ML" language looks fairly cool, what with
the automatic arg typing, etc.
Does lisp "dominate" ml, or do you guys use BOTH,
one for some things, the other for other things.
No, this is not a homework problem. Just a reasonable
question.
(am usually just a lurker in this group, except for
recent posts about scribe).
Thanks
David
There appear to be quite a lot of people, including me, who tend to be
"language junkies", (although I am trying to get over it). In the last 6
months I have downloaded implementations of ML, Dylan and K, and maybe
another, but I can't remember. I just threw them all out. My personal
preference is coming to be use only a small number of languages, in order to
avoid cluttering my limited mind with too many possibilities. The suggestion
that one person made of preferring languages with several implementations
(particularly free ones) is I think good.
Just my opinion.
David Combs <·······@netcom.com> wrote in message
···············@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com...
> That "ML" language looks fairly cool, what with
> the automatic arg typing, etc.
>
> Does lisp "dominate" ml, or do you guys use BOTH,
> one for some things, the other for other things.
>
> No, this is not a homework problem. Just a reasonable
> question.
>
> (am usually just a lurker in this group, except for
> recent posts about scribe).
>
> Thanks
>
> David
>
"Jim Bushnell" <········@swcp.com> writes:
> There appear to be quite a lot of people, including me, who tend to be
> "language junkies", (although I am trying to get over it). In the last 6
> months I have downloaded implementations of ML, Dylan and K, and maybe
> another, but I can't remember. I just threw them all out. My personal
> preference is coming to be use only a small number of languages, in order to
> avoid cluttering my limited mind with too many possibilities. The suggestion
> that one person made of preferring languages with several implementations
> (particularly free ones) is I think good.
I've found myself to be an artificial language slut as well. It's
perhaps compensation for my accursed american heritage of knowing only
on natural language. But I'm not as quick to throw all of them out.
Except for Java, C++, tcl, and a few others, I appreciate them all on
their own. Remarkably tho, I have found that all of the projects I do
in my free time that have gotten to useable points, have been done in
scheme or Common Lisp. These two have a special place in my heart,
but not one which stops me from appreciating OCaml and other MLs,
Pop-11 (which is so gorgeous), mercurcy, prolog and others.
Part of my obsession is probably because my girlfreind is getting her
PhD in comparative literature and does alot of critical theory and the
like. The effect on me is that I'm extra-sensitive to the limitations
that a given way of thinking has, and how it constrains me in
particular ways. I'm not saying I've somehow become a metaphysician
of artificial languages or something, but I'm always trying to find
some feature, or style or mechanism which I have not seen before, so
that I will always be aware of how limited my current mind-set is.
I'm also paranoid about the seeming inability of many people today to
relate to the alien (not the green kind), so I'm sorta instinctually
driven towards unfamiliar languages that were put together by people
who think very different from me.
The net effect has been that when I can make myself sit down and code,
rather than try and learn a new language, my code has been improved
greatly. I understand alot more about what I am doing, and what
constraints I am working under, and I know alot of different ways to
do things now.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Scheme/Lisp Software http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Less matter, more form! - Bruno Schulz
ignazz, I am truly korrupted by yore sinful tzourceware. -jb
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> writes:
> but not one which stops me from appreciating OCaml and other MLs,
> Pop-11 (which is so gorgeous), mercurcy, prolog and others.
>
The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
interesting treat: one environment with Pop-11, Prolog, ML and
Common Lisp fully integrated and interoperable, and with heaps of
libraries.
--
Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be>
If there are aliens, they play Go. -- Lasker
Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be> writes:
> Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> writes:
>
> > but not one which stops me from appreciating OCaml and other MLs,
> > Pop-11 (which is so gorgeous), mercurcy, prolog and others.
> >
>
> The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
> environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
> interesting treat: one environment with Pop-11, Prolog, ML and
> Common Lisp fully integrated and interoperable, and with heaps of
> libraries.
I have spoken with Aaron Sloman about this in the past, and was
totally stoked. I never did find out what license they were putting
it under. Do you have some new information about the licensing scheme
they will be using?
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Scheme/Lisp Software http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
Less matter, more form! - Bruno Schulz
ignazz, I am truly korrupted by yore sinful tzourceware. -jb
Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be> writes:
> Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com> writes:
>
> > but not one which stops me from appreciating OCaml and other MLs,
> > Pop-11 (which is so gorgeous), mercurcy, prolog and others.
> >
>
> The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
> environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
> interesting treat: one environment with Pop-11, Prolog, ML and
> Common Lisp fully integrated and interoperable, and with heaps of
> libraries.
This is good news.
And for the daily italian lesson: "dopo sette fette...." (tran.: after
seven slices...)
That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?
Date:
Message-ID: <nkjn1xg9049.fsf@tfeb.org>
Marco Antoniotti <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> writes:
> That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
> merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
>
I think there are just intractable bureaucratic objections to anything
like that in UK universities, at least. The fact that they've managed
to get somewhere is pretty heroic, even if it is 20 years too late...
Other people I know in UK academia have spent months fighting
bureucrats and eventually given up & just unilaterally put stuff up
for ftp.
(Of course, that kind of nightmare, combined with the overriding
imperative to publish suitably academic (all that software engineering
crap doesn't count) papers so you get grants, to the exclusion of
almost everything else, teaching included, may well be why UK
universities produce almost no cool software compared to US ones).
--tim
From: Aaron Sloman See text for reply address
Subject: Open Source in the UK (Was Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?)
Date:
Message-ID: <7mvref$8t3$1@soapbox.cs.bham.ac.uk>
Tim Bradshaw <···@tfeb.org> writes:
> Date: 01 Jul 1999 10:43:02 +0100
> Organization: The Tardis Project
>
> Marco Antoniotti <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> writes:
>
> > That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
> > merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
> >
>
> I think there are just intractable bureaucratic objections to anything
> like that in UK universities, at least. The fact that they've managed
> to get somewhere is pretty heroic, even if it is 20 years too late...
It's not so simple. Sussex were bound by a formal contract, which has
only recently been terminated.
As the person who used to manage the Poplog project at Sussex
(between about 1980 and 1991, when I left for Birmingham) I can
explain what happened.
We started selling Poplog around 1982 when we discovered (a) the
possibility of doing so and (b) we had to find some way of paying
the person who was then helping us develop it for our own teaching
and research. We used to charge academics 300 pounds, and commercial
sites 3000 pounds and were willing to be nice to academics who had
little or no money.
We also included all the sources, and quite a lot of users learnt a
great deal from having the sources (and moreover when documentation was
incorrect, out of date, or incomplete, sources were essential!)
But the burden of doing all the selling (i.e. the burden on me) grew
too much after about a year, so we tried to get professional help,
and in 1983 Systems Designers Ltd (SDL) agreed to take it over, on
condition that they had exclusive selling rights except that we
insisted, and they agreed, that we could distribute directly to
academics in the UK.
They also insisted that Poplog be distributed without the sources. (One
reason was that if people had access to sources and started relying on
undocumented features support could be impossibly difficult -- and they
wanted to be able to guarantee commercial level support to their
customers.)
Sussex then signed a formal contract with SDL, which included the
restriction on distribution of sources.
Maybe if I had understood all the issues better I might have been able
to persuade SDL that sources should continue to be included. But that
was a long time ago, and the world was different.
By the mid 80s Poplog had four languages (Pop-11, Lisp, Prolog and ML)
and a window manager was being developed too (Sunview based at first,
though it was hoped that it could be ported: this was before the rise of
X.) Making all this happen and keeping it going required more
programmers than could be paid for by royalty income.
So we tried to get funding from the UK research council/Alvey Programme
to continue the development, and to keep porting it to new widely used
machines (the initial version was implemented in Vax/VMS, and was later
ported to Suns, and to various other unix engines). It was clear that
Poplog could be useful for teaching and research, as well as some
practical applications.
They gave us some money but made it a REQUIREMENT of the grant that we
collaborate closely with a commercial organisation: and in fact they
made SDL the project leaders. It was important to the Alvey directors to
show that projects they had sponsored could generate commercial sales,
especially export sales.
We were supposed to give Poplog free of charge to users who had research
council grants but to charge others!
Later when SD (as it was by then called) decided to pull out of the AI
products business, the Poplog contract was transferred to ISL, a much
smaller company formed in 1989 by a small group of people from SD who
had been closely involved with Poplog.
Shortly after that (in 1991) I left Sussex, as I needed a change after
27 years in one place. I then became a customer (though we remained
friends)!
Throughout the 1980s, at the height of the Thatcher era in UK
government, there was considerable schizophrenia about funding research.
We still live with the consequences, but it is interesting to notice
that the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council recently
decided to extend their referee's comments form for grant proposals by
asking referees to comment on the element of "adventure" in a proposal.
Anyhow, SPSS took over ISL last December (see www.isl.co.uk) and some
time later ISL and Sussex agreed that each could do exactly what they
liked with Poplog.
Sussex realised that the only sensible thing to do was make it generally
available free of charge, and when I offered to set up a distribution
site, allowed me to do so. Hence my earlier announcement about
ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/freepoplog.html
> Other people I know in UK academia have spent months fighting
> bureucrats and eventually given up & just unilaterally put stuff up
> for ftp.
In this case the problem was a commercial contract. Anyhow I think ISL
are very happy with the new arrangement since SELLING Poplog is no
longer a commercially viable activity: they merely USE it in their
products.
> (Of course, that kind of nightmare, combined with the overriding
> imperative to publish suitably academic (all that software engineering
> crap doesn't count) papers so you get grants, to the exclusion of
> almost everything else, teaching included, may well be why UK
> universities produce almost no cool software compared to US ones).
And others from outside the USA, e.g. Sicstus?
An exception: I think Edinburgh University was deeply involved in the
design and development of ML.
Maybe now that Poplog is free it will be seen as another exception?
The core Poplog language, Pop-11, is derived from Pop2, which was
developed in Edinburgh in the late 60s early 70s.
Cheers.
Aaron
===
--
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
EMAIL A.Sloman AT cs.bham.ac.uk (NB: Anti Spam address)
PAPERS: ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/groups/cog_affect/0-INDEX.html
From: William Deakin
Subject: Re: Open Source in the UK (Was Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?)
Date:
Message-ID: <37945B8A.C18C3F16@pindar.com>
For my two pence, I suspect the reasons for these difficulties are somewhat
deep seated and cultural.
There is (was) a large snobbery amongst academics about selling things, or
doing things that could be useful, or in fact about where you and they sit
on the ladder. This maybe historic and has to do with the make up of British
academia (and society). Until relatively recently the definition of a
gentleman was that he was so wealthy that he didn't do anything useful. A
element academia still come from this background. And there are still these
attitudes present (albeit in the minority) in the British academic system.
I realise this is a contentious point, but from my experience of
post-graduate life this has at least verimsilitude. For example: two
professors at the high table bemoaning the fact that the quality of
university life has been cheapened by 'the working class' entering
universities and about how they tried to discourage 'those kind of people'
from getting a place at their university. This upset me and upsets me still
....
Secondly, during the last 20 years academia in this country has been given a
good kicking by wholesale hacking away of grants and funding, and by
attempts to get research to pay for itself. And to give a return similar to
those given by investing in the stock market. But without incentives for
industry to get involved in much of this work e.g. tax breaks, underwriting
of some of the risks. This was work is expected to give returns and be
developed into production strength applications from pure research projects
on time scales of one or two years!
Thirdly, this massive cultural shift was to carry on whilst people often
carried an expanded teaching role, because colleges had to lay off or not
replace an increasingly ageing staff, whilst also coping with a doubling in
the number of students to be taught. Again this was carried out over about
three to four years.
This was whilst also producing top rate cited research pages (what one
friend called 'the sausage factory') to ensure that funding was continued
for the research and teaching that was the actual reason why these people
took on the job in the first place.
Finally, if you had the inclination and time to develop something and that
people may be interested in, university had to vet where they wasn't a
possibility of flogging this before it could be released. This would involve
lengthy dull tedious meetings to convince people who are trying to glean the
last ha'penny out of anything that in fact what you do can't be sold.
I also know staff who left and did something else because every pound they
made on consulting work they carried out 80p was deducted from their pay.
You have to do all the teaching and the research and also develop something
which people were interested, try and sell you skills based on this wizzo
product and then have an effective pay cut!
I should qualify this by saying that this is my experience of physics
research, but based on my highly biased network of friends, this seems to be
a fairly universal.
In summary: There was (and maybe still is) little incentive to develop
open-source software in academia. When are people to get the time to do
this? What are the incentives in time or money? you don't get promoted for
it, or thanked. In fact a lot of people will be jealous and think you're a
smart arse. And as my dad used to say, nobody likes a smart arse.
I sorry if anybody feels aggrieved by this analysis as this not my
intention. I have just reread this and realise this is a fairly bleak
indictment of the British education establishment. I think this is unfair
there are many many good and brilliant things about universities and
colleges in this country, but I'm just not sure that developing software is
currently one of them....
:-) will
* Aaron Sloman See text for reply address wrote:
> [I wrote]
>> (Of course, that kind of nightmare, combined with the overriding
>> imperative to publish suitably academic (all that software engineering
>> crap doesn't count) papers so you get grants, to the exclusion of
>> almost everything else, teaching included, may well be why UK
>> universities produce almost no cool software compared to US ones).
> And others from outside the USA, e.g. Sicstus?
That's perhaps a good example -- what happened to NIP? There must
have been a good deal of work in that which has all been lost now.
(for non-uk-academic types, NIP was New Implementation of Prolog,
which was done at Edinburgh and was (I think) the first WAM Prolog).
Perhaps there was some licensing with Quintus (which I think was some
of the same people) which made it be unavailable, or perhaps it was
bound up in weird Alvey-licensing. I guess I should ask because I
know a few of the people involved.
> An exception: I think Edinburgh University was deeply involved in the
> design and development of ML.
I admit to not knowing much about ML. Is (was) there a
widely-available distribution from Edinburgh?
> Maybe now that Poplog is free it will be seen as another exception?
I hope so. In any case it's very good that it's freely available now!
It sounds from what you say like Poplog was not really an example of
what I was complaining about, except in the sense that it is an
example of something that originated in UK Academia that (almost)
never saw the light of day.
I still would like to understand just why we (UKoids) do so much worse
than the US and perhaps the rest of the world (if, in fact we do,
perhaps it is misperception on my part).
--tim
From: Aaron Sloman See text for reply address
Subject: Re: Open Source in the UK (Was Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?)
Date:
Message-ID: <7n2ot5$juv$1@soapbox.cs.bham.ac.uk>
[Now cross-posted to comp.lang.prolog in the hope of getting more
accurate answers.]
Tim Bradshaw <···@tfeb.org> writes, in response to my comments.
> Date: 20 Jul 1999 08:25:29 +0100
> Organization: TFEB.ORG Ltd
>
> * Aaron Sloman See text for reply address wrote:
>
[TB]
> >> (Of course, that kind of nightmare, combined with the overriding
> >> imperative to publish suitably academic (all that software engineering
> >> crap doesn't count) papers so you get grants, to the exclusion of
> >> almost everything else, teaching included, may well be why UK
> >> universities produce almost no cool software compared to US ones).
>
[AS]
> > And others from outside the USA, e.g. Sicstus?
>
[TB]
> That's perhaps a good example -- what happened to NIP? There must
> have been a good deal of work in that which has all been lost now.
> (for non-uk-academic types, NIP was New Implementation of Prolog,
> which was done at Edinburgh and was (I think) the first WAM Prolog).
I don't know full details. There was certainly a portable
implementation of NIP which was made available from Edinburgh,
though I can't remember under what terms. I believe the portable
version interpreted some intermediate representation.
There was also a bob-portable fully compiled version for at least
one hardware platform, perhaps sparc/sunos.
I seem to recall that the interpreted version was relatively slow,
but perhaps someone more knowledgeable will correct me.
[TB]
> Perhaps there was some licensing with Quintus (which I think was some
> of the same people) which made it be unavailable,
I think people from Edinburgh who helped start up Quintus had done
so long before NIP came on the scene. I don't know whether NIP had
any features that could compete with Quintus.
> or perhaps it was
> bound up in weird Alvey-licensing. I guess I should ask because I
> know a few of the people involved.
[AS]
> > An exception: I think Edinburgh University was deeply involved in the
> > design and development of ML.
[TB]
> I admit to not knowing much about ML. Is (was) there a
> widely-available distribution from Edinburgh?
I was under the impression that Edinburgh work fed into the NJ ML.
[AS]
> > Maybe now that Poplog is free it will be seen as another exception?
>
[TB]
> I hope so. In any case it's very good that it's freely available now!
>
> It sounds from what you say like Poplog was not really an example of
> what I was complaining about, except in the sense that it is an
> example of something that originated in UK Academia that (almost)
> never saw the light of day.
>
> I still would like to understand just why we (UKoids) do so much worse
> than the US and perhaps the rest of the world (if, in fact we do,
> perhaps it is misperception on my part).
There are other things that still survive, including Prolog on the
Mac from LPA, originally developed at Imperial College.
I think the lack of adequate research support funds in the UK has
something to do with the problem, along with the formal requirement
to turn products of government-funded university research into
commercial products.
Moreover, when universities are all strapped for cash, there is a
temptation to try to make money from saleable products of research
instead of freely sharing them with the research community.
In the end that's counter productive.
Aaron
--
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
EMAIL A.Sloman AT cs.bham.ac.uk (NB: Anti Spam address)
PAPERS: ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/groups/cog_affect/0-INDEX.html
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: Open Source in the UK (Was Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?)
Date:
Message-ID: <7n5ua9$3dbdd@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Aaron Sloman <···················@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
+---------------
| Moreover, when universities are all strapped for cash, there is a
| temptation to try to make money from saleable products of research
| instead of freely sharing them with the research community.
| In the end that's counter productive.
+---------------
(*sigh*) As the entire history of Mosaic/Netscape/Mozilla (or should that
be Mosaic/Mozilla/Netscape?) and the lawsuit between NCSA & Netscape ought
to have shown us...
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, 8L-855 ····@sgi.com
Applied Networking http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
Silicon Graphics, Inc. Phone: 650-933-1673
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. FAX: 650-933-0511
Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA
On 01 Jul 1999 09:08:09 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
<·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote:
> Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be> writes:
[...]
> > The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
> > environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
[...]
> That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
> merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
I've read about a petition for asking MIT to release the code of ITS under
an open-source license.
Paolo
--
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it>
·······@mclink.it (Paolo Amoroso) writes:
> On 01 Jul 1999 09:08:09 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
> <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote:
>
> > Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be> writes:
> [...]
> > > The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
> > > environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
> [...]
> > That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
> > merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
>
> I've read about a petition for asking MIT to release the code of ITS under
> an open-source license.
great! now all i need is a pdp-10 to run it on...
--
johan kullstam
From: Christopher R. Barry
Subject: Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?
Date:
Message-ID: <871zerllrg.fsf@2xtreme.net>
·······@mclink.it (Paolo Amoroso) writes:
> On 01 Jul 1999 09:08:09 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
> <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote:
>
> > Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be> writes:
> [...]
> > > The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
> > > environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
> [...]
> > That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
> > merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
>
> I've read about a petition for asking MIT to release the code of ITS under
> an open-source license.
And what use would one have for that?
Christopher
On Fri, 02 Jul 1999 04:19:24 GMT, ······@2xtreme.net (Christopher R. Barry)
wrote:
> ·······@mclink.it (Paolo Amoroso) writes:
[...]
> > I've read about a petition for asking MIT to release the code of ITS under
> > an open-source license.
>
> And what use would one have for that?
Probably no practical use, of course. Its importance would be mostly
historical and emotional.
Paolo
--
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it>
On Fri, 02 Jul 1999 04:19:24 GMT, Christopher R. Barry
<······@2xtreme.net> posted:
>·······@mclink.it (Paolo Amoroso) writes:
>
>> On 01 Jul 1999 09:08:09 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
>> <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote:
>>
>> > Lieven Marchand <···@bewoner.dma.be> writes:
>> [...]
>> > > The University of Sussex is preparing to open source their Poplog
>> > > environment, which should give language freaks like you and me an
>> [...]
>> > That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
>> > merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
>>
>> I've read about a petition for asking MIT to release the code of ITS under
>> an open-source license.
>
>And what use would one have for that?
The availability of an OS that was created for hardware no longer available
does not seem to be of much practical use, particularly when large portions
of it were *not* written in a portable language.
It would be valuable from a historical perspective, but not greatly from
a practical one.
I'm not sure whether a release of Multics code would be more or less
useful; Multics has the merit of largely being written in a "high level
language."
Unfortunately, that language is PL1, for which there is limited
availability of free compilers.
Furthermore, Multics and possibly ITS depended on hardware facilities
not commonly available on modern equipment.
--
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
········@hex.net - "What have you contributed to free software today?..."
From: Tim Bradshaw
Subject: Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?
Date:
Message-ID: <nkjpv2b2xta.fsf@tfeb.org>
······@2xtreme.net (Christopher R. Barry) writes:
It would mean you could run it on your PDP10, of course, and be much
cooler tham anyone in the entire universe!
You mean you don't *have* a PDP10? I don't think you are allowed to
read comp.lang.lisp unless you have one.
--tim (no I don't, In fact I'm just about to scrap my last
non-power-of-2 wordsize machine)
From: Christopher R. Barry
Subject: Re: Advantages of lisp over ML?
Date:
Message-ID: <87lncydcgp.fsf@2xtreme.net>
Tim Bradshaw <···@tfeb.org> writes:
> --tim (no I don't, In fact I'm just about to scrap my last
> non-power-of-2 wordsize machine)
Your scrapping your LispM!?!
[Ivories are 40-bits... I was wondering why my 380MB disk was 90% full
when there wasn't hardly jack installed on it, and I discovered that
the 32 mega-words of swap the thing came configured with was using
160MB!!! And an incremental world with CLIM uses over 20MB....]
Christopher
* Christopher R Barry wrote:
> Tim Bradshaw <···@tfeb.org> writes:
>> --tim (no I don't, In fact I'm just about to scrap my last
>> non-power-of-2 wordsize machine)
> Your scrapping your LispM!?!
Yes. Too power-hungry and the disks are basically dead. I am getting
another soon though but adding that would have spoiled the effect (:-).
> And an incremental world with CLIM uses over 20MB....]
In other words, it's tiny!
--tim
Marco Antoniotti <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> writes:
> This is good news.
>
> And for the daily italian lesson: "dopo sette fette...." (tran.: after
> seven slices...)
>
> That is to say, it surely took them quite awhile to understand the
> merits of "open source", especially for an educational institution.
I ain't rejoicing until I see the license. I know that Aaron Sloman
has the best intentions in the world (and is one of the best tutorial
writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading) but he is dealing
with institutions which may not understand Free Software. I do not
know how else is working with him on this opening of this wonderful
tool, but I hope that they are able to get all parties in control to
agree to a well known Free Software license of some type.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Scheme/Lisp Software http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
I say woe unto those who are wise in their own eys, and yet
imprudent in 'dem outside -Sizzla
In article <··············@duomo.pukka.org>,
><snip>
>Part of my obsession is probably because my girlfreind is getting her
>PhD in comparative literature and does alot of critical theory and the
>like. The effect on me is that I'm extra-sensitive to the limitations
>that a given way of thinking has, and how it constrains me in
>particular ways. I'm not saying I've somehow become a metaphysician
>of artificial languages or something, but I'm always trying to find
>some feature, or style or mechanism which I have not seen before, so
>that I will always be aware of how limited my current mind-set is.
>...
Sounds interesting. Could you say a few words about what
you have learned by osmosing from her studies.
Anything (free) on the net worth reading about it?
Thanks!
David Combs
In article <··········@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>,
David Combs <·······@netcom.com> wrote:
>That "ML" language looks fairly cool, what with
>the automatic arg typing, etc.
Yes, it's pretty cool. (-: It has some interesting properties.
>Does lisp "dominate" ml, or do you guys use BOTH,
>one for some things, the other for other things.
(snip)
Lisp is far more widely used than ML. ML does have its place, though -
personally, I like the strong typing, infix operators and symbols
instead of words, etc. ML is great for strongly functional programs,
especially involving symbolic computation, e.g. theorem provers. Lisp
would probably be a reasonable choice for most of the programs you
might be writing in ML instead, though; I write fairly similarly in
both. Wonder if anyone disagrees.
I think Harlequin might still do a free personal edition of a decent
ML compiler, but I can't remember and Harlequin aren't exactly in very
good shape just now anyway. Hope all works out okay.
Take a quick look at Scheme and Haskell, too, if you have the time.
-- Mark
Mark Carroll wrote:
> Take a quick look at Scheme and Haskell, too, if you have the time.
I've started taking a peek, and it seems Concurrent Clean is more
interesting than Haskell,
especially if you are an Occamhead ;-)
Hello!
In article <·················@iname.com>,
Fernando Mato Mira <········@iname.com> wrote:
>I've started taking a peek, and it seems Concurrent Clean is more
>interesting than Haskell,
Perhaps it is. But OTOH, there's no Open Source Clean implementation,
and no free (even if only private/educational use) binary release for
OpenBSD, either.
And I'm a bit less fond of one-implementation-languages compared
to multi-implementor ones.
Regards, Hannah.
Hannah Schroeter wrote:
> Perhaps it is. But OTOH, there's no Open Source Clean implementation,
> and no free (even if only private/educational use) binary release for
> OpenBSD, either.
I asked someone at Nijmegen and I was told they provide the code to
people that need it ported to platforms they do not support.
·······@netcom.com (David Combs) writes:
>That "ML" language looks fairly cool, what with
>the automatic arg typing, etc.
>Does lisp "dominate" ml, or do you guys use BOTH,
>one for some things, the other for other things.
I really like strong typing nowadays, and don't really like the
package system of Common Lisp. But I won't give up Lisp syntax for the
strong typing and I also think that ML is "too" functional. Especially
character string handling is must better in most other languages. Also
foreign (C) calls are much more elegant in i.e. CMUCL, due to both
Lisp macros and freedom in data (re)placement.
IMHO, ML could have been a killer language if they realized their
vision of typing and modules on the base of Lisp, but kept everyting
else they weren't sure of its bad. Throwing out Lisp syntax clearly
didn't get the result they desired (more users due to familar syntax,
as if ML syntax would be familar for anyone) and also Lisp's approach
to functional programming (make it optional) could have been kept
within the framework of a new typing and module approach.
Martin
--
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <········@bik-gmbh.de> http://www.bik-gmbh.de/~cracauer/
"Where do you want to do today?" Hard to tell running your calendar
program on a junk operating system, eh?
In article <··········@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>,
·······@netcom.com (David Combs) wrote:
> That "ML" language looks fairly cool, what with
> the automatic arg typing, etc.
>
> Does lisp "dominate" ml, or do you guys use BOTH,
> one for some things, the other for other things.
Take the following with a grain of salt - I have used ML only a
little and have not used Lisp, but am about to start....
Lisp is the grand-daddy of a whole bunch of languages, some more
directly than others. It's been used for years and years by some
of the best in the business, and as a consequence is powerful and
unwieldy (I'm talking about Lisp in the wide sense, including CLOS
etc.).
There have been several attempts to clean up the language - making
types more explicit is one of the things that hasn't been added
into Lisp itself, and Dylan was an attempt to do this and make
the syntax more "normal". Scheme keeps the syntax and dynamic
typing, but throws out a lot of the more baroque features (you might
argue it goes to extremes and throws out way too much...)
ML is not as direct a descendant, but comes from the same stable.
The type system is very neat - you only rarely have to declare things,
the rest is inferred automatically. However, the language has a
strong bias towards functional programming and there is no support
in standard ML for OOP (but Ocaml - I hope I have that right - does
have OOP and is considered by many to be much better, if more
experimental).
I found the package system in ML less than impressive, but maybe
that's because I was trying to use it to as I would use objects in
Java/C++, when it was really intended to be used in a different way
(since it's a functional language it's not clear that you need that
kind of encapsulation anyway - OTOH I have heard others, more
knowledgeable than I, also complaining). It worries me that people
here who use Lisp think it's an improvement - how bad is Lisp?!
As for future prospects - I am writing from the UK and, for a number
of years, lived in Edinburgh ("home" of ML, or at least one dialect).
My impression then (and even now, to some extent) is that Lisp is
dying, and that ML has a reasonable chance of following it - although
I think the days of a single "dominant" CS language may be over. But
then Lisp was never that big in Europe (where, for example, Prolog
was more popular).
What attracted me to ML was (1) I wanted to see what the type system
was like and (2) I wanted to understand functional programming. I
didn't stick with it long enough to enjoy it - but it did make me
look round for a better language. Having used Python a fair bit,
I am not as worried as I was about dynamic typing (having started
with C, which has only vague compile-time type checking and nothing
at run time, I welcomed the rigid type system of Java), and Lisp
seems the natural language to use if you want to use whatever style
of programming seems best for the task (Python is too restricted
in it's support of closures and recursion, for example). Dylan was
tempting, but seemed dangerously ill supported - that was before I
heard the terrible news about Harlequin.
Don't know if that rambling account helps...
Andrew
PS There is an ML newsgroup, who are friendly and well informed. It's
much smaller than the Lisp group, and more academic. The
comp.lang.functional group is also a good place to go.
PPS The above may make more sense if you know that I'm a self-taught
software engineer with no formal training in computing, hence starting
with C and only now looking at things like ML and Lisp.
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