Interactive scientific computing: Goldilocks languages

http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/189377.html

by mbauman • 12 years ago

82 20 12 years ago

graydon2.dreamwidth.org

enupten• 12 years ago

Julia is an awesome language (and about time too!).

For those of looking for a more lispy tool, checkout the version of Matlisp I'm writing: https://github.com/enupten/matlisp/wiki

agumonkey4• 12 years ago

PHP initially implemented its loops by fseek() in the source code.

real #wtf

ps: ltu discussion http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4990

StefanKarpinski4• 12 years ago

I keep thinking about that tidbit and laughing.

jacquesm• 12 years ago

That looks like someone took the 'everything is a file' unix mantra a little bit too far.

agumonkey4• 12 years ago

hyper late bound lazy streamed os cached interpreter pattern

krapp• 12 years ago

wait... how does that even work?

Read the current file's source from the start of a block and eval() the text n times or something?

That's just cheating.

agumonkey4• 12 years ago

Do you really wanna know ?

thret• 12 years ago

Could fseek be considered more harmful than goto?

agumonkey4• 12 years ago

#define fseek goto

jahewson2• 12 years ago

It's a real shame that Julia doesn't have a well defined syntax, especially given that the parser is written in the author's own non-standard lisp dialect.

3JPLW• 12 years ago

Honest question: why does that matter to you? The language is still pre-1.0. There's also a fully functional Julia implementation if the parser now, too: https://github.com/jakebolewski/JuliaParser.jl

StefanKarpinski4• 12 years ago

Femtolisp is a very small, fast Scheme implementation – and Scheme is the most thoroughly standardized dialect of Lisp there is. The fact that Julia's parser is implemented in flisp also completely irrelevant to the user – you can for all purposes just consider it a C program that implements a custom parser for Julia. It's true that there isn't a formal grammar specification of Julia's grammar, but I'm not sure what that would be especially useful for.

cwp• 12 years ago

It would be useful for implementing Julia parsers.

Guthur• 12 years ago

"...Scheme is the most thoroughly standardized dialect of Lisp there is"

More standardized that ANSI Common Lisp, hint it's in the name.

</facetious-reply>

jahewson2• 12 years ago

But Femtolisp isn't Scheme, it's a non-standard Scheme with its own custom built-ins. It's quite impossible to run a Femtolisp program using a Scheme interpreter without modification.

Formal grammars are enormously useful, I almost always refer to them at some point when learning a language. It's an important part of being in an ecosystem larger than oneself. I'd question how a language without a well defined grammar has well defined semantics as the OP claims.

How many languages have you learned the syntax of by reading the source code of its parser? How about when the parser is implemented on a language you've never used?

zem• 12 years ago

i have never gotten a good answer to why lush [http://lush.sourceforge.net/] failed to be a succesful goldilocks language in this space. the only real flaw i saw in it was the lack of lexical scoping; other than that it looked like a great solution to the same problems julia is addressing.

ende• 12 years ago

I love the history here. I know many CS programs offer a programming languages course, but I really think that should be mandatory.

Interactive scientific computing: Goldilocks languages

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