[FRIAM] Programming Languages

[Dale Schumacher]

And given Alan Kay's statements about Actors being closer to his original
conception of Objects, and that the key idea is the Message (async one-way
in the Actor case), a strong composable option would be something like
Humus. Since all Actor state is private, it can only be manipulated by the
actor's behavior (a message-handler for async events). Each event is
handled atomically, so there is no rentrancy issue.

http://www.dalnefre.com/wp/humus/

Humus provides a minimal (but not "toy") implementation of Actor primitives
for causing effects, and a pure-functional (lambda calculus) core for
expressing values. Lately I've been gaining some traction is the use of
Humus for defining the behavior of fine-grained concurrent systems.



On Sat, Aug 8, 2020 at 11:15 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> If your goal is to provide the machine with the most accurate and precise
> instructions possible then Assembler, followed relatively closely by C,
> cannot be beat.
>
> For specific domains, a language that allows easy, straightforward
> expression of domain concepts is superior. COBOL for business applications,
> FORTRAN (FORTRESS, Guy Steele's parallel FORTRAN) for physics, and *some*
> intentional DSL's.
>
> Now it gets tricky, because it depends on exactly what kind of virtual
> machine you want to impose on the hardware. A computer — a Turing Machine —
> can be any kind of virtual machine you want, each of which can be Turing
> Complete and therefore exact equivalents of each other. If I want to define
> my virtual machine as a logical implementation of an abstraction, Lambda
> Calculus perhaps, then the programming language that most closely expresses
> that abstraction, LISP for example, is the best.
>
> If your abstract virtual machine implements some kind of functional
> paradigm, the the functional language that directly and simply expresses
> ideas in that paradigm is best.
>
> If your abstraction is classical logic, the PROLOG; etc/, etc..
>
> The reason this is tricky is that all of these abstract virtual machines
> and the languages that express associated abstract concepts are little more
> than interesting toys. All are equal, all are equally irrelevant.
>
> Now, as to objects:
>
> There are no object languages, the closest approximation would be Self.
> The next closest would be Simula - but NOT Simula I, the first incarnation
> of the language that was a "programming language."
>
> The greatest tragedy to befall objects was the idea of OO Programming
> because the object concept has little or nothing to do with programming —
> the concept provides an elegant way of thinking about, modeling,
> modularizing, and designing systems; especially the large scale complex
> (not just complicated) systems that comprise the world around us.
>
> Given people that can think in objects and design with, for, and in
> objects; then it is possible to train them in the proper use of Smalltalk
> for effective implementation of those designs.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2020, at 6:45 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> > I figured it was time again to start an opinions on programming languages
> > free for all. Functional rules while imperative drools. Objects are fine,
> > but it's better to know what you are doing!
> >
> >
> >
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