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Showing posts from May, 2003
I found an interesting connection between the Nice language I mentioned Friday and Microsoft. It seems that MS is developing a new language called F# . The limited information available indicates this language borrows from both imperative languages and functional languages. Just like Nice . According to this article F# is a derivative of Objective Caml (OCaml) . OCaml in turn owes its existance to Caml . And, finally, Caml is a dialect of ML . This is where the connection becomes more interesting. (at least to me) The Nice language can trace its to existence to research by Francois Bourdoncle and Stephan Mertz into what they call the ML-Sub type system. Nice's author Daniel Bonnoit later did academic research on the ML-Sub type system and used that research as the basis for Nice. So it seems that both F# and Nice have similar lineage and if interest in piqued for F# perhaps Nice will gain some notice.
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I just took this Matrix Persona quiz . Seems I'm a Neo.
I was surprised, during a recent visit to the page: Programming Languages for the Java Virtual Machine , by how many people are attempting to leverage the Java VM with new languages. Most of these languages look like toy projects, but a few seem serious. Way down the list under the OO languages is a little language called Nice . It has some very interesting features . I haven't tried writing anything in yet, but that might be my next project,
While vanity surfing I found the following article I wrote translated into what I believe is Polish. English version Polish version Who'da thunk it.
I recently read an interesting essay by Paul Graham titled The Hundred Year Language . I liked the essay a lot but one thing bugged me, its depiction of evolution. (Actually a couple of things bugged me but aren't worth addressing) The mantra that was beat into my brain in zoology class was that evolution was not a tree so much as a bush that radiated in all directions. The main difference in this analogy is that there is no 'trunk' and that there is no apex of evolution 'the tree top'. In the bush analogy, there is not a single most successful design, each living tip is a success. What works and can compete in its environment should be considered as successful in an evolutionary sense - regardless if it walks on two feet and programs in Lisp for a living or has one foot, lives in the mud, and filters sea water to survive.