Re: First steps on the road to reinventing computing * 4:15PM, Wed Feb 14, 2007 in Gates B01

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Skomra, Stew" <sskomra () qualcomm com>
Date: February 14, 2007 10:56:51 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: FW: [IP] First steps on the road to reinventing computing *  
4:15PM, Wed Feb 14, 2007 in Gates B01

Dave:  For IP.  Interesting perspective from Peter Clare of Oracle  
fame. Stew.


Stewart A. Skomra
Director Business Development
QUALCOMM Wireless Business Solutions
5775 Morehouse Drive

San Diego, CA 92121-1714

E-Mail:  sskomra () qualcomm com

Office:  858-845-2302

Fax:  858-651-5102

Mobile:  858-740-4643


From: Peter Clare [mailto:pclare () apacheta com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:51 PM
To: Skomra, Stew
Subject: RE: [IP] First steps on the road to reinventing computing *  
4:15PM, Wed Feb 14, 2007 in Gates B01


The problem w/ this approach philosophically (I think) is that most  
layered abstractions in real life undergo paradigm shifts as you move  
from one domain to another. Sure, you can describe cooking via atomic  
reactions, or even chemistry, but who cares – I guarantee you that a  
chemical model of cooking won’t likely taste as good as a traditional  
mixing ingredients w/ a pinch here or there approach.


The same is true for computer paradigms. Every (computer) modeling  
language is designed to solve a particular set of problems, and will  
likely be miserably inadequate for problems outside the domain for  
which this language was intended. Sure, pgmrs can do amazing things  
w/ languages using techniques that the language designers themselves  
didn’t forsee – but this is just stretching the limits, not making  
any fundamental paradigm shift.


I have always tho’t that computer weenies want to play at being God,  
and that our systems reflect this basic arrogance and prejudice.  
Somehow, we feel that this modeling Deus ex Machina is going to solve  
some implausable problem by inserting the genius of Our-New-Computer- 
Language-in-God’s-Image into the mix. I am skeptical.


The real world seems rather complex to me and we seem to have varying  
degrees of comfort and discomfort using many different (internal)  
systems and models to navigate our way through The Maze. Such is the  
World.


If we look at the evolution of computer-as-language today, we use a  
wide variety of linguistic mechanisms ranging from Imperative to  
Dialogue to point-and-click Exploration to You-Name-It. At the end of  
the day, most of these linguistic mechanisms are basically proxies  
for communicating our intent to other people, usually communally  
through space and time, much as literature communicates intent  
through space and time.


If we look at the chaos that is the current landscape of ways to  
communicate our intent via these linguistic automatons, it is pretty  
easy to see that computer language mechanisms are evolving much the  
way natural languages evolve – via our ad hoc social systems that  
determine in a willy nilly way what works and what doesn’t over long  
periods of time.


Fun stuff. P


-----Original Message-----
From: Skomra, Stew [mailto:sskomra () qualcomm com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 11:43 AM
To: pclare () apacheta com
Subject: FW: [IP] First steps on the road to reinventing computing *  
4:15PM, Wed Feb 14, 2007 in Gates B01


FYI -- From Dave Farber's Interesting People.  Stew.


-----Original Message-----

From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]

Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 10:37 AM

To: ip () v2 listbox com

Subject: [IP] First steps on the road to reinventing computing * 4:15PM,

Wed Feb 14, 2007 in Gates B01




Begin forwarded message:


From: allison () stanford edu

Date: February 14, 2007 1:34:55 PM EST

To: dave () farber net

Subject: [EE CS Colloq] First steps on the road to reinventing

computing * 4:15PM, Wed Feb 14, 2007 in Gates B01

Reply-To: ee380 () shasta stanford edu




              Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium


                  4:15PM, Wednesday, Feb 14, 2007

         HP Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B01

                    http://ee380.stanford.edu[1]


        Building your own dynamic language is fun and easy!


Topic:    First steps on the road to reinventing computing


Speaker:  Ian Piumarta

           Viewpoints Research Institute


About the talk:


Viewpoints Research Insitute recently began a five-year project

to reinvent how we program and interact with computers. An early

goal of our work is to make a practical, working mathematical

model of a complete personal computer system that invites

understanding and modification by users at all levels.


An essential part of the model is a programming language and

environment that exhibit the properties desired of the system at

large. In computer science terms, this language and environment

are:


metacircular -- they are sufficiently powerful to implement

themselves with no extrinsic behaviour or other `magic'; and

self-similar -- the essential data abstractions and mechanisms

used to describe the most primitive levels in the implementation

are the same as those presented to the user as the building

blocks of arbitrary computation.


The result is a compact and understandable programming

environment in which nothing is hidden from, or beyond the

influence of, its users.


In this talk I will describe several significant aspects of the

design and implementation of this programming environment. The

foundation is a pair of mutually-supporting abstractions for

behaviour and state. These abstractions are individually very

simple and incapable of completely describing their own

implementation. When combined, however, each abstraction provides

all of the necessary `extrinsic magic' required for the other to

describe itself.


The behavioural abstraction is inspired by McCarthy's rendering

of LISP in LISP. In a half-page description, McCarthy created a

recursive model that was small enough to be easily understandable

and yet sufficiently complete to permit fruitful thinking about

its meaning. In the spirit of McCarthy's LISP I will show how the

abstraction for state in our system is modelled in terms of

objects responding to messages, where the semantics of message

sending are defined recursively in terms of objects responding to

messages.


I will finish by describing of the remaining components of our

programming system (from parsing to code generation) and the

techniques that keep everything open, understandable and

dynamically extensible by the user.


Links to References:


NSF Grant: Steps Toward The Reinvention of Programming

http://www.vpri.org/html/work/NSFproposal.pdf[2] An evolving

whitepaper about the "combined object-lambda abstractions"

http://piumarta.com/papers/colas-whitepaper.pdf[3] A small paper

describing just the object model in detail

http://piumarta.com/pepsi/objmodel.pdf[4] Slides:


Download[5] the slides for this presentation in PDF format.


About the speaker:


Ian Piumarta is a computer scientist at Viewpoints Reseach

Institute. He studied at the University of Manchester (UK) where

he was awarded a B.Sc. followed by a Ph.D. for work on code

generation techniques. After a couple of years as a post-doc at

Manchester he moved to Paris to work at IRCAM. He then spent ten

years working at INRIA and the University of Paris VI before

moving to the United States and taking his current position at

Viewpoints. He spends most of his time thinking about and

implementing technologies for making computer languages more

open, reflexive, dynamically self-describing and understandable.

The rest of his time he spends listening to music, playing Bach

on the guitar, building hi-fi equipment and flying airplanes.


Contact information:


Ian Piumarta

Viewpoints Research Institute

1209 Grand Central Ave

Glendale, CA

818 332 3001

ian () squeakland org[6]



Embedded Links:

[ 1 ]    http://ee380.stanford.edu

[ 2 ]    http://www.vpri.org/html/work/NSFproposal.pdf

[ 3 ]    http://piumarta.com/papers/colas-whitepaper.pdf

[ 4 ]    http://piumarta.com/pepsi/objmodel.pdf

[ 5 ]    http://piumarta.com/papers/EE380-2007-slides.pdf

[ 6 ]    mailto:ian () squeakland org



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