Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Oz -- Re: [om-list] ARC]]

[om-list at onemodel.org]

I am interested in (tho' still sort of a newbie at) Scheme, a lisp 
dialect, because I learned in a class that it can do things other 
languages have difficulty with, such as (ok, gotta get the book now...) 
processing program code as if it were any other data, "currying", 
"memoizing", powerful macros, and handling of "continuations".  We used 
scheme to model other language features in fairly consise code. It seems 
a little harder to get your mind around at first, but then lets you 
think great thoughts, in a way, that I could not easily see doing in 
python (which was my next choice). Whether all this will be practical or 
just a great educational exercise for myself, remains to be seen. Dan 
Friedman said (in about 1991) that when he asks whether something can be 
done in scheme, the answer is always yes.

Scheme is also very portable and the language definition is short and 
understandable. It is the language used in what some regard as the best 
introductory computer science text (used at MIT course material now 
freely available on-line): Hal Abelson's, Jerry Sussman's and Julie 
Sussman's _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_.

Arc sounded good to me because it seems to address aspects of Scheme 
that seemed "extra" or odd to me (lambda becomes just fn, for example).

I can probably put together a list of URLs if you're interested. There 
was a "great computer language shootout", not scientific I guess but 
interesting, where a lisp programmer completed the application in less 
time and less code than anyone else. And if memory serves, it ran fast. 
(Although that lisp programmer is probably smarter than most programmers 
so had an advantage.) Another web page I remember discussed why they 
felt lisp gave them a competetive advantage--it took their competition 
much longer to write the same code in C++.

Many of the same things could be said about python, except the things 
that seem like they let you think great thoughts. Scheme is extremely 
expressive of concepts that just don't come up in other languages 
because they're harder to express, and in that sense scheme/lisp are 
very powerful.

So I'm using scheme for now as a (semi-experimental) scripting language, 
or a language to write parts of OM in. Because (like python) you have an 
interactive interpreter to write code, you know when you type it in and 
hit Enter whether it worked or not. But the integration between scheme 
and java in the OM program has eaten up a lot of my time on the project 
lately. I keep thinking either it will pay off sometime, or be 
educationally worthwhile, not sure which (I'd prefer both but we'll 
see). The scheme implementation I am using is SISC.

om-list at onemodel.org wrote:
> Hello OM
> 
> 	I'm testing my new address in this mailing list.
> 
> 	And, while I'm here, could I ask Luke and Mark to explain what they
> like about ARC and Lisp.  Are you guys going to use ARC or another Lisp?  To
> do what?
> 
> 	Danke, danke,
> tomp
> 
> On Monday 09 August 2004 06:15, om-list at onemodel.org wrote:
> 
>>For some reason Oz doesn't move me--maybe it's Tk & Gtk, or that I don't
>>see any postgresql or mysql libraries, or that to do some things it
>>looks like I have to drop into C/C++ which makes it non-cross-platform,
>>or it feels like a small niche.
>>
>>Mark, I'd like to follow ARC, or for that matter any major developments
>>in the lisp community as a whole. How did you hear about it? I haven't
>>found a good mailing list for that.
>>
>>-------- Original Message --------
>>Subject: Re: [Fwd: Oz -- Re: [om-list] ARC]
>>Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 07:43:28 -0600
>>From: Luke Call <lacall at onemodel.org>
>>To: Luke Call <lacall at onemodel.org>
>>References: <411238E8.9030301 at onemodel.org>
>>
>>and, does mozart have api's for many things, or ways to call things in
>>other languages or from them?
>>
>>quick web ck on mozart-oz.org?
>>
>>reply saying which resonates & why, arc interesting to follow, where did
>>mark hear about it?
>>
>>ask sisc list 4 opinions?
>>
>>
>>>-------- Original Message --------
>>>Subject: Oz -- Re: [om-list] ARC
>>>Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 10:04:34 -0600
>>>From: om-list at onemodel.org
>>>Reply-To: om-list at onemodel.org
>>>Organization: BYU CS NLP
>>>To: om-list at onemodel.org
>>>References: <410FA736.6090905 at middle.net>
>>>
>>>Om
>>>
>>>    Have you guys checked out Mozart / Oz?  It's multi-paradigm,
>>>including functional/applicative/declarative.  So, in a sense, it is a
>>>new lisp-like language, too.  (It has lists and all those operators
>>>talked about in the paul graham web site that constitute lisp's kernel
>>>language.)  But it is also
>>>a new OO language, a new logic programming (Prolog) language, a new
>>>constraint programming language, a new distributed and concurrent
>>>programming
>>>language, and the cool thing about it is, you can do all of those things
>>>in the same language.  And it has been around for long enough that it is
>>>quite usable.  It has a wider following in Europe than the US, I believe,
>>>which is
>>>where it is developed, which is probably why you don't hear about it much
>>>around here.
>>>
>>>tomp
>>>
>>>On Tuesday 03 August 2004 08:54, om-list at onemodel.org wrote:
>>>
>>>><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
>>>><html>
>>>><head>
>>>>  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
>>>>content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title>
>>>></head>
>>>><body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
>>>>Hello everybody,<br>
>>>><br>
>>>>It isn't done yet, but I am really impressed with what Paul Graham et
>>>>al, are doing with a new LISP like language called ARC:<br>
>>>><br>
>>>>&nbsp;&nbsp; <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
>>>>href="http://www.paulgraham.com/arcll1.html">http://www.paulgraham.com/a
>>>>rcl
>>>>
>>>>l1.html</a><br> <br>
>>>>- Mark Butler<br>
>>>></body>
>>>></html>
>>
>>--
>>-------
>>A really secure computer operating system (unix flavor):
>>http://www.openbsd.org.
>>"Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years"
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Ciao,
> TomP in BYU CS NLP
> 
> I have changed my email address to:
> tpackers at byu.net
> 
> Check out my way of indexing information:
> http://www.ontolog.com/LinkRanker
> ````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> 
> --
> 
> Ciao,
> TomP in BYU CS NLP
> 
> I have changed my email address to:
> tpackers at byu.net
> 
> Check out my way of indexing information:
> http://www.ontolog.com/LinkRanker
> ````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> 

-- 
-------
A really secure computer operating system (unix flavor): 
http://www.openbsd.org.
"Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years"