Buzz: An Extensible Programming Language for Self-Organizing Robot Swarms

by allenleein • 11 years ago

30 18 11 years ago

dang• 11 years ago

Url changed from http://www.technologyreview.com/view/539761/a-programming-la..., which points to this.

alisnic• 11 years ago

Am I missing something? Why is there a need for a separate programming language for a use case like this? Don't we have enough programming languages to get by? Why a library wouldn't suffice?

It just does not seem reasonable to me to dump an ecosystem built by an established programming language to solve a domain problem

sklogic6• 11 years ago

Am I missing something?

Yes, you're missing an entire huge world of the domain-specific languages.

Don't we have enough programming languages to get by?

No, not even nearly enough. There is no such thing as a general-purpose programming language. Every little problem domain needs its own language.

Why a library wouldn't suffice?

Because libraries enforce leaky abstractions.

It just does not seem reasonable to me to dump an ecosystem built by an established programming language to solve a domain problem

Then you really do not understand the value of DSLs. And you don't have to dump anything, eDSLs allow everything to co-exist nicely.

altrego99• 11 years ago

An API would do the job just fine.

smilekzs3• 11 years ago

I beg to differ. After skimming through the article, it seems that the proposed langauge resembles a general-purpose language (at least superficially resembling lua/javascript) with FFI to C (again what lua is good at). The domain-specific parts are either libraries or covered by runtime (in C), instead of language-level constructs.

IMHO there is no real benefit of creating a "new" language compared to e.g. just using Lua + C.

TeMPOraL2• 11 years ago

No, not even nearly enough. Every little problem domain needs its own language.
Then you really do not understand the value of DSLs. And you don't have to dump anything, eDSLs allow everything to co-exist nicely.

How about using a language that lets you build DSLs from it? Lisps are especially good choice.

I don't really see the point in createing a new language that is 95% identical to everything else, only to tweak that last 5%. Yes, you're still using a library, you're just hiding it inside the compiler.

bobochan• 11 years ago

Very cool. Cirque du Soleil (which is also based in Montreal) made an interesting movie featuring robot swarms last year in collaboration with ETH Zurich and Verity Studios:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C8OJsHfmpI

Buzz: An Extensible Programming Language for Self-Organizing Robot Swarms

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